I’ll probably get good access in time. Elsa will shed forty pounds and when she remarries she’ll be generous, just as my father
eventually abandoned his bitterness when he remarried.
I’ll see Alfred later. It’s the end of something, but it’s not the end of the world.
It feels like it, though. It sure feels like the end of the world. Worse.
I pick up Alfred and hug him. Then I put him down again, run out of the nursery, grab the picture of six-month-old Alfred
from the living-room, shove it in one of my suitcases and blunder outside. I hail a yellow car but it’s not a cab.
Can’t see properly.
Stupid. I hate stupid things. Tears are stupid, only permissible for women and every other race on earth except Anglo-Saxons.
Maybe I’m not such an Anglo-Saxon after all.
We go to Reno and wallow in plastic culture for six weeks. When my residency is established I file for a divorce and bribe
everyone to push the proceedings along as quickly as possible. Elsa signs the appropriate papers, and the day after the divorce
is granted Vicky and I marry in a marriage parlour crammed with plastic flowers.
That afternoon we leave for Los Angeles, and the next day we fly to Hawaii for a week.
I look forward to the honeymoon but sex hurts Vicky now so I just go for walks by myself along beautiful beaches, very romantic,
and I listen to the sea and try not to think too much about Alfred. Vicky and I talk a little but she remains tense. Finally
we decide it’s the wrong time for a honeymoon so we fly home to New York, and Vicky can hardly wait to reach Fifth Avenue
to see the kids.
I watch the joyful reunions and think of Alfred. Presently I say hullo to Postumus who’s over a year old now with thick reddish-brown
hair, blue eyes and an impudent look. He smiles at me chirpily and I smile back, trying to pretend he’s mine but he’s not;
he’s Sam Keller’s son and brother to those two little horrors Eric and Paul. The thought of being stepfather to Eric and Paul
is not one bit exciting. Soon we’ll be looking around for a brownstone large enough to accommodate the family and all the
servants we’ll need to keep the domestic wheels turning, but I wish we could leave the four eldest kids with Mother and Cornelius
and just take Postumus. I think Vicky would prefer that too but she’ll never do it – and not just because she loves those
children of hers. She’ll never leave them because she knows she could never handle the resulting guilt.
Vicky and I aren’t meant to have a bunch of kids. Some couples are, some couples aren’t. Elsa and I could have managed six
kids and enjoyed them; Elsa only slobbers over Alfred because she knows she can’t have more children, and if she had a large
family she’d soon pull herself together to play the role of
materfamilias
to perfection.
But Vicky is incapable of being a
materfamilias
. Her children are a mystery to her. She showers them with affection, which is good, but beyond this she seems to have no
idea how a mother should behave. If there are unpleasant scenes she retreats behind Nurse; she not only can’t face the squabbles
endemic in any large family but she can’t face up to the fact that if you really love your children you’ll lay down the law
occasionally in order to help them understand they can’t gallop through life trampling everyone underfoot as they grab what
they want. Perhaps her desperate concern to demonstrate love by lavish kisses and misguided permissiveness springs from a
subconscious knowledge that she doesn’t, in truth, love them as she should. But she’ll go to any lengths to conceal this from
them, from the world and from herself so she beats her brains out trying to be what she thinks is a good mother with the result
that the little pests, spoilt rotten, walk all over her. This in turn destroys her confidence in herself, and the less confidence
she has the more she craves their love and the more she
spoils them rotten in the mistaken belief that this will transform them into devoted sons and daughters.
There’s only one ray of hope that I can see on the horizon, but it’s not much of a ray and it may be a mirage created by my
intense longing to view the future with optimism. It’s possible – just remotely possible – that Vicky, contrary to most parents,
may be able to handle those kids better when they’re teenagers. I think she has the potential ability to look back clear-eyed
at her own adolescence and draw some honest sensible conclusions. However, meanwhile she has five children under ten and she’s
useless.
With an understanding and supportive husband, Vicky could possibly manage one child. Two would put a strain on the marriage
but with additional luck and the same understanding, supportive husband she could probably still manage. But five children
is a disaster and six is a plain invitation to tragedy. How we’re going to survive I don’t know, but all we can do is try.
Vicky and I could probably manage Postumus and the new baby. We could without doubt manage the new baby alone. But the truth
is we should be a childless couple. I always sensed this, I think, and that’s why the liaison seemed such a good idea. Mother
and Cornelius may be dewy-eyed at the thought of the new baby, but Vicky and I deep down are running scared.
These are taboo thoughts. Not wanting children is abnormal. Acknowledging that some couples are better childless is offensive
to society. So Vicky and I keep our doubts to ourselves and pretend we’re pleased, a married couple signalling: NORMAL, NORMAL!
to everyone we meet.
‘You’re sure you don’t want an abortion?’ I say to Vicky more than once.
‘I couldn’t. I believe women should always have the right to choose whether they want an abortion or not, but I don’t think
I could ever face it unless the pregnancy was the result of rape or the doctors swore the child would be born a monster. It’s
the guilt. It frightens me. I’d be too terrified of cracking up.’
She’s right. Vicky’s been overloaded with guilt for so long that even though I’ve helped her shed some of it she’s still in
no fit state to risk taking on more. Of course some women see no need to feel guilty about having an abortion, but if you’re
guilt-prone or if you’ve been reduced to the brink of suicide in the past because you feel so inadequate and ashamed, you
don’t go asking for trouble by aborting a foetus. That’s common sense, and if Vicky can see that then surely I can see it
too.
‘You want me to have an abortion, don’t you, Sebastian?’
‘No, I want whatever’s best for you, and as far as I can see you’ve made the only possible decision in the circumstances.
But I had to make sure you didn’t want to change your mind while there was still time.’
‘I couldn’t … couldn’t …’
‘Then don’t. You’re right. I’m glad. We’ll manage.’
‘I’ll love him when he comes,’ says Vicky, falling back on a platitude to keep our distress at arm’s length.
‘So will I.’
It’s true. We’ll love him. But that doesn’t alter the fact that his conception was a big mistake which is bound to have far-reaching
and perhaps disastrous consequences.
We decide not to set up a home of our own before the baby comes so we stay on at Fifth Avenue and whenever we can’t stand
life in the Van Zale mansion a second longer we escape to the blessed privacy of our apartment.
It’s good to be back there again. Vicky’s pleased too but soon she’s miserable, knowing I want sex, feeling inadequate because
she can’t face it, crashing emotionally from inadequacy to guilt to shame.
‘Look,’ I say, ‘it’s okay. I’ll get along. I’m not going to die. I had to live a celibate life at school, and I’ll live a
celibate life again for a while, that’s all. It’s no big deal. Don’t feel there’s any pressure on you.’
She looks at me with troubled grey eyes and says: ‘Will you be unfaithful?’
‘Not interested. Other women don’t exist.’
‘But how will you manage?’
She’s so innocent sometimes that I’m reminded of the diaphragm disaster. I explain how I’ll manage behind a locked bathroom
door.
‘Sam probably did the same and didn’t tell you,’ I say, shrugging it off to show her how unimportant the subject is, but even
as I reassure her I’m thinking that it would be just like Sam Keller, smart-aleck, man-of-the-world Sam Keller, to kid himself
that her aversion gave him a legitimate excuse to two-time her.
I can feel Sam’s shoes sliding on to my feet again and this time they’re pinching a bit but with an effort I can still kick
them off. I’ll not stand in Sam Keller’s shoes because I love Vicky and no matter what happens I’m going to save her; I’m
going to give her back that life which Sam went so far to destroy.
I call Elsa. It’s stupid but I can’t help myself. I’ve got to know how
Alfred is. Mother says he’s fine but she hasn’t seen him since Vicky and I went to Reno because Amy Reischman took Elsa and
Alfred on a trip to Europe and they’ve only just returned.
‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Don’t hang up. How is he?’
‘Fine.’ She hangs up.
I get mad. Anger’s healthy. I call back.
‘I want to see him.’
‘Huh! What a hope!’, is her first reaction but then she relents and I see Alfred. He remembers. His little face lights up.
He runs over and chatters to me. He still doesn’t talk too clearly yet, but I can understand what he’s saying. I stay ten
minutes and watch him play. I never see Elsa. Nurse meets me when I walk in and Nurse shows me out when I leave.
I feel much better after seeing Alfred.
Christmas comes and goes. The new decade dawns. Vicky and I no longer attempt sex but one good aspect of our marriage is that
we can now go out frequently without having to worry about Elsa’s detectives. We go to plays, galleries and concerts – even
to Presley’s most recent movie
King Creole
which keeps reappearing to give sustenance to all the Elvis fans gasping for their drafted hero’s next venture on the screen.
We have a lot of laughs, a lot of interesting conversation, a lot of fun. It almost makes up for the sex being hopeless, but
even that should pick up after the baby’s born. All I have to do is endure a schoolboy’s sex-life until March – no, April
or early May. The baby’s due in March but Vicky’ll need time to recover from the birth.
God, it seems a long time to wait.
21 March, 1960. Vicky gives birth to our son. I feel happy but Cornelius and Mother are happier. I hope they don’t upset Vicky
who’s looking pale and tired.
‘I’m all right,’ she says when I see her but she’s not. Something’s going on in her mind. She’s thinking, thinking, thinking.
She’s a million miles away.
I’ve taught her how to think. I’ve shown her the view from a different window on the world. I’ve encouraged her to believe
she’s an individual with a mind of her own. Is the ultimate irony going to be—’
But no. I can’t let myself consider that. I won’t.
Come back, Vicky. Please come back. I love you and I truly believe we can make it together.
Maybe Sam Keller said those words once. I’m right back in his shoes again but this time they’re stuck and I can’t kick them
off. Have I really done no better than Sam Keller? Maybe not.
But surely I must have done better! Because I love Vicky I can see her with such vivid clarity that I can not only identify
her suffering but unhesitatingly locate its source. I understand her. I know exactly what she’s been through and I’ve helped
her survive. How could I improve on that?
Yet something’s wrong. Perhaps after all it’s I, not Elsa, who resembles the
idiot savant
who can’t write his name although he can calculate logarithms in his head. I may be an expert on Vicky, but I’m no expert
on women in general – the way I underestimated Elsa proves that. In certain favourable circumstances I can show prodigious
talent as an amateur analyst, but what’s really going on at the back of my mind behind the overwhelming drive of my love and
sympathy and concern?
Perhaps I want to cure Vicky not so much for her sake as for mine. Perhaps, like Sam, I’m trying to make her over into what
I want her to be – an intellectual companion, an exciting partner in bed, a mistress who can enable me to enjoy life to the
full. But what does Vicky want? I think she would have enjoyed the role I wanted to assign to her; I think the liaison could
have worked very well. But that’s not the point. The point is first that Vicky’s still not running her own life and second
that the liaison itself is no more. Vicky’s no longer my mistress. She’s my wife, and I don’t think she’s any more suited
to be a wife than Sam Keller was suited to be a husband.
Do I seriously think Vicky’s going to enjoy running a big household and dealing with a shoal of kids any more now than she
did when she was married to Sam? No, I don’t. And do I seriously think that after performing these Herculean domestic duties
she’ll have any more energy left over for me than she had left over for Sam? No, I don’t. And never mind me either – forget
me for a moment. The truth is Vicky won’t even have enough energy left over to live any kind of life of her own, the one destiny
I’ve advocated for her all along. She’ll just be getting bogged down all over again in the kind of life she’s not at heart
interested in, and she’ll never have the chance to find out what kind of life might suit her better. In other words, despite
all I’ve done she’ll be right back at first base.
If only we could have maintained the liaison! I can see more clearly than ever now that we were meant to be lovers, not a
married couple as defined by our plastic society, and yet here we are, a married couple
with a baby plus five other kids waiting in the wings, and it’s all wrong for both of us and both of us secretly know it.
I’m in such pain that I can’t analyse the situation further, can’t work out what the answer is – if there’s an answer at all,
which I doubt. All I know is that the trouble’s getting bigger, like the pain, and our relationship’s falling apart.
I begin to doubt if the pain can get any worse but it does.
The baby becomes sick. We’ve decided to call him Edward John. He weighs eight pounds two ounces and is pink and white with
no hair. I like him very, very much and when he’s sick I’m very, very upset. He lies in an incubator fighting for breath.