Such Men Are Dangerous (17 page)

“I noticed that, back there, we Heaths all talked exclusively about ourselves. Nobody seemed much interested in hearing about the life and times of Miss Geraldine Coe, girl correspondent.”

“Not true,” she answered. “Your wife asked me a number of things while we were doing the washing up. Your sons were with us, too, and seemingly interested.” She suspected that Josh might have been getting rid of his (not very heavy) six o’clock shadow at the time and splashing on, a little too liberally, more of that cheap aftershave.

“All the same,” he said, “it’s now my turn. Tell me, Miss Coe, are you happy in your work?”

“Yes, thank you. Mostly.”

“Career woman?”

“Certainly. Any reason why not?”

“You wouldn’t give it up, then, if the right man came along?”

“The right man wouldn’t expect me to.”

“Then the right man wouldn’t want children?”

“Perhaps I’m unnatural. At the moment, to me, children don’t seem all that necessary.”

“Good.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A lot of women are pressured into feeling they ought to have children. It’s nice to see you’re different.”

“Well, I think I shan’t really know how different I am until the situation arises, if it ever does.”

“Oh, come off it. You know that you’re attractive.”

“That isn’t quite the compliment you think.”

They arrived at the hotel. The receptionist had difficulty in finding her a room. Geraldine signed the register. Josh suggested they should have a drink at the bar. “I can’t stay here too long,” he added, on seeing her hesitate.

This struck Geraldine as pathetic. “All right. On the
Chronicle
.”

“Very much on the
Chronicle
. By the way, when do I get my cheque?”

“I was going to give it to you in the morning or at any rate before I left. I can make it out now if you like.”

“No, when you go. A nice little parting gift. Something to remember you by.” He didn’t ask about the sum involved.

He ordered a gin-and-It for her, a whisky for himself. Doubles.

They sat in comfortable armchairs in comfortable surroundings. The place was fairly empty.

“Why aren’t you married, then, by the age of…thirty? Thirty-one?”

“As though marriage were definitely the be-all and end-all?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Well, you tell me, then. Is it?”

“A good one.”

But she didn’t wish to hear about his marriage problems. “
And
, damn you, you’re an unflatteringly good judge of age.”

“You don’t need to damn me. I’m sure I’m damned already.”

“That isn’t what you were saying in the coffee bar.”

“Damn what I was saying in the coffee bar.” They laughed.

“But in that case hadn’t you better do something about it? You can’t go round feeling you’re damned…whatever that expression may mean to an unbeliever.”

“Two lost souls on the highway of life,” he said grandiloquently. He thought he might have heard it in a song.

“Why two?”

“Because I wouldn’t even mind being damned if I were in the right company.”

He smiled.

“Come to that, I wouldn’t even mind being saved if I were in the right company.”

“There’s one thing. Nobody could call you a fussy man.”

“But…”

“But…?”

“I do like a little bit of butter to my bread!”

“Of course! How
could
I forget?”

“I think you’re meant to say, ‘There, there!’”

“No. That’s the wife’s job. It was the Queen who said, ‘There, there!’”

“It was also the dairymaid.”

“I suppose I should be thankful it wasn’t the cow.”

They both remembered at the same moment. The cow
had
said it. It was a good moment.

His whisky was finished quickly. He went to fetch another. “Charge it to me,” Geraldine called across.

“I have!”

He returned to his chair.

“You know, when you picked me up on the be-all and end-all, I wasn’t thinking of it
only
from the woman’s point of view.”

“In that case, perhaps you’re not as lost as you believe you are. Or, actually, as I believed you were when you said it.”

“Friends?”

She nodded. “Friends.” They raised their glasses to the concept.

“No, I’m not lost at all.” He was very much a creature of moods, or contradictions. “
I
know where I’m going.”

“In search of butter.”

“It’s just that…well, the dear knows who’s going with me.”

“I know who’s going with me,” she said. “Or, anyway, I hope I do. You see, there is in fact somebody I’d like to marry. But there’s a snag.”

“He has a wife already.”

“End of sad and very ordinary story.”

“It must be me.”

“Except, as I say, I hope it’s not the end.”

“Again you missed your cue.”

“Oh?”

“Is he happy with his wife, this man of yours?”

“Do you really suppose that if he were—?”

“No, of course not. Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”

“They live in the same house,” she said, “but apparently don’t talk. Or hardly ever. Only when it’s unavoidable.”

“My God! Then why don’t they divorce?”

“He says they will…when the children have left school. The younger one is fifteen.”

“Another three years?”

“Yes,” she said. “Another three years.”

“And in the meantime how often do you see him?”

“Two or three evenings a week. He stays quite late.”

“And don’t you worry he may be taking you for a ride? A wife at home who cooks his food and washes his clothes and knows his funny little ways. Respectability. And a sophisticated and intelligent girlfriend who looks the way you do and possesses her own flat…”

“Of course I worry. You call me intelligent and sophisticated, yet speak to me as though I were stupid and naive. How like a man! How like a certain type of man!”

“I’m sorry. You’re offended?”

“Well, if so, there’s only myself to blame, very clearly. But there’s usually supposed to be a certain measure of relief, isn’t there, in talking out your problems with a stranger?”

“A stranger? Is that the way you think of me?”

She returned surprised look for surprised look. “Well, isn’t that the way you think of
me
? We met for the first time less than five hours ago.”

“Two lost souls on the highway of life? Friends?”

She smiled—a little crossly—but didn’t answer.

“Shall I tell you something? I don’t know about this procrastinating boyfriend of yours. I would start divorce proceedings first thing in the morning if I thought there was a chance of having someone like you. I said there’s nothing better than a good marriage. There’s also nothing worse than a bad one. Take it from me.
I
know. Even if your boyfriend doesn’t.”

She hesitated. She attempted another smile. She said, “I’m not sure whether to be flattered or appalled.”

“Does honesty appal you?”

“Yes. In certain situations. Most definitely, a man who wouldn’t pause to consider the plight of two very pleasant teenage children might…worry me a little.”

“And how do you know, then, that I haven’t paused to consider it? And paused and paused and paused again? Let me explain. I’ve dreamed of nothing else for
years
but of being able someday to break free.”

She stared at him.

“And, in any case, if you think that
I’m
being hard,” he went on, bathetically, “I very well remember the way you talked about your parents…about your dead parents.”

She said rather quietly, after a few seconds: “You noticed that, did you?”

“
Dumb or drunk
! It wasn’t very nice.”

“Yes. As soon as I’d said it I felt ashamed.” She paused. “But sometimes when you’re trying to amuse or impress or simply to avoid the sentimental, you come out with things which…oh, I don’t know…which…” She shrugged and looked at him appealingly; and if at that moment he had responded with the sympathy which actually he was well capable of, and which, too, she strongly sensed he had within him, she would have been very open to receiving comfort.

There were several strands he could have picked on.

“Are you saying, then,” he asked, slowly, “that you were trying to impress
me
?
Me
?”

At any other time she might have been touched by this essential lack of confidence, in contrast to his habitual mockery, his attempts at the bold front, the peacock strut. She was reminded of his nervousness on the phone.

“Yes,” she said, dully, “I suppose I was.” It was true. She couldn’t take it from him.

He grinned. “That means you find me attractive?” It was a bad time for the grin. It was a worse time for the question.

“Found,” she said. “That was before I discovered you were someone who believes in spelling things out, someone who’s merely waiting for the first bandwagon to roll into town on which to make his getaway. It was before I discovered other things as well: amongst them, the truthfulness of first impressions. “

“You think I regard you as a bandwagon?”

She said: “After only five hours I don’t know what else you could regard me as.”

“You clearly don’t believe, then, in love at first sight?”

“Not since adolescence. Only in lust at first sight. Or opportunity.”

“But don’t you see? I could really give you such a lot. What with my book—and all this money from the
Chronicle
—and all the publicity. And
now
, not in any mythical three years! I’m a fellow who’s going places. Don’t you see?”

“If it’s of any possible consequence…yes, I think I do see.”

“Also,” he said, trying to sound matter-of-fact but acquiring only a faintly pleading quality, “I can honestly tell you this. That I’m very good in bed.”

“Oh, terrific!” she answered. “Should I offer my congratulations to you, then, or to Dawn? I’m sure she must really appreciate her luck!”

She thought that before he looked away she saw the beginning of tears—and only just stopped herself in time.

She’d been about to say: “There, there!”

25

The first time after marriage that she had period pain and had to return to bed with it, Simon said, “Darling, we can’t have this! Where does it hurt, exactly?”

“How do you mean: where does it hurt exactly? It hurts all over! Here, and here, and
here
! Just go away and let me die in peace. Mummy was right. Men never understand these things.” But by the time she had got to the last two sentences, she was smiling a little, despite everything. She took his hand. “I’m sorry, Sim. This always makes me feel so very rotten. When you said
we can’t have this
it sounded as if I might be throwing a tantrum to win attention and all I needed was a little self-control.”

“But where did you say it hurt, again?”

“Oh, Simon, it isn’t the sort of thing you can pin down. I told you. All over.” She released his hand.

“Around here, would you say, mainly?”

“What are you doing? Massage won’t help.” Her testiness intensified. “Nor, funnily enough, will tickling.”

“Be quiet a moment. I’m neither massaging nor tickling.”

“What is it, then: Teach Yourself Obstetrics?”

“Gynaecology. Not quite. But I suddenly remembered something. When I was a child I used to have warts on my fingers. I had them for a long time. Then at bedtime one evening, while I was saying my prayers, my mother suggested I should ask God to heal them for me. And after a week or two they’d gone.”

“How
sweet
!”

“And once—only a short time later—I was staying with an aunt who developed a migraine. ‘Poor Aunty Madge,’ I said and put my hand on her forehead. ‘Jesus will take it from you.’ And not only did that one clear up remarkably fast but ever since, apparently, her headaches have just been ordinary headaches. No migraines.”

“You must really have been rather a sweet child,” she said, distracted. But it wasn’t long before the irony came back. “What’s the success rate nowadays, doctor?”

“Not very high, I’m afraid. I found it didn’t work too noticeably on colds or toothache or—or on coronaries, either.” He bit his lip and took his hand from under the coverings. “Oh, I don’t know why I bother. You’re right. It’s just a farce.”

“Oh, Simmy,
don’t
! I honestly think it helped a bit, having your hand there. It felt comforting.”

“Well, at least that’s something.”

“Who knows? You might truly have a gift.”

“You go to sleep.”

“Enjoy your walk across the Heath, my Simeon.
Next
Sunday I’ll come with you.”

But she didn’t go to sleep, prescribed tablets being patently as ineffectual as faith healing. She turned from side to side, clammy and nauseous; with Simon gone, she groaned. At length she opened her eyes and lay on her back and listened to the bells. She wished that she could find it hypnotic: the counterpoint of church bells. But it was only soothing from a distance and in her present state she was soon impatient for its end; her stomach grew more jangled every minute, until she actually cried out in her frustration, hysterically demanding obedience. (She hadn’t known she was going to do that; as well as being surprised she felt immensely foolish. She wondered what Mr Kurosawa might have made of it, or Mrs Gupta, had either of them been passing on the stairs; and the speculation made her smile, however bleakly.) She turned on her side again and gazed wearily around their home; Simon had left the curtains drawn but they were thin and offered only dimness, not obscurity. They had pinned up travel posters; put roses in a jar; been given gaily-coloured ornaments (what fun that day had been, eating bagels and ice creams as they went from stall to stall, returning with their garish gifts and useful bargains—this time a week ago they had been there!); but what was really needed was overall replastering and fresh paint and wallpaper, and to such extremities they were not prepared to go. Even if they had been, the divan on which she now lay would have dominated and destroyed; like the tatty armchairs and the chest whose bottom drawer stuck and the wardrobe whose door you had to wedge—to say
nothing
of the shiny blue lino, cracked and cigarette-ringed, the furry matted rug, the gas fire with its broken mantle and black meter, the obtrusive ugly sink, the grease-encrusted cooker. She glanced from one pitiful object to the next, wondering with what affection she would look back upon them in the future…and then a solacing reflection came to her. She thought that despite the way she felt now, despite the bells, despite what her parents would have said about this room and about this house, with its unwashed walls, its unswept floors, its babel of strange voices, its spicy cooking smells and unappealing lavatory and bathroom—what they would have said, too, about their registry office wedding, streamlined, utilitarian, sparse not only in ceremony and frills but in family attendance (only Simon’s aunt and mother there, who, bless her, had taken both them and their handful of guests straight on to a Lyons Corner House celebration); she thought that, despite all this, despite her temper and his temper and their tiffs and their frequently boring jobs (him at John Barnes, herself at Woolworth’s), she was, against all the odds, indescribably happy. Radiantly happy, gloriously happy, spectacularly happy; enjoying her new life, when it
was
enjoyable, with an intensity, a clarity of sensation, an almost frenetic awareness which she had seldom experienced, certainly not in any reasonably sustained manner over a period of three weeks. She had never laughed so much, never found so many small things to take pleasure in, never been so interested, so uninhibited, so confident, so loving. Loving towards everyone, not simply towards him.
Doting
towards him. Yes, she doted on him, on every word he said (apart from the times when she didn’t dote on him nor on any word he said), on every smile, on every frown, on every movement, on every line and muscle of his body, whether it was clothed or unclothed. Indeed, it wasn’t healthy, the way she doted on him, not for either of them, but since this doting phase was bound to pass—so books and plays and life informed her, not to mention, of course, mothers—why not simply give in to it, make the delicious and ecstatic most of it while she was lucky enough to have it, this new and ephemeral experience? Therefore she doted. Shamelessly. “See Naples and die,” she told herself.