The Pumpkin Eater (11 page)

“I think you'd better take me home now,” I said.

“Oh, come on, duckie.” He was panting heavily and his moustache was wet. “Give me another kiss.”

“If you don't take me home, I shall walk,” I said.

“What's the matter? You said you wanted to see me!”

“Well. I've seen you. Please will you take me home?”

So he did, as far as the bottom of the drive. He looked puzzled.

For the rest of the day I lay on my bed, or more accurately rolled and tossed and curled up like a spring on my bed, in a state of horror. My mother cajoled, shouted, even slapped me at one point, but I was speechless. Whenever she went out of the room I called desperately on the clergyman's son to save me, but when she came back again I simply howled and hiccuped, feeling as though there were a great gale in me which I could not contain, a storm so violent that I need not even try to control it. I must be saved, I thought, I must be saved. From what? I didn't know, but later I began to know. The nervous boy, whom I loved, was good. Mr. Simpkin was evil. I wanted to be delivered from evil by love, and never to touch it again for the rest of my life. Not for me the sofa at the Masonic Ball, the dirty joke, the quick bash; not for me spite, deceit, disgust. Save me, I implored the clergyman's son, please save me. I didn't know, of course, that this conception of salvation was completely idiotic, and that no man, woman or child can be another's saviour. I did not even know this twenty-six years later, when I talked to Bob Conway in my own delightful sitting room and recognized once more the brutality that for half a lifetime I had called Mr. Simpkin.

Around supper time my mother called the doctor in. He said it was my age, and gave me a couple of pink pills. Before I went to sleep I told her all about it. She was exceedingly shocked and said we must keep it from my father. She didn't know I even knew about such things, she protested; she didn't know I had a side like that to my character at all. Whatever came over me, she asked, whatever possessed me? I sobbed into my slimy pillow that I didn't know. I never saw Mr. Simpkin again. Possibly he left the neighbourhood. Eighteen months later, in the clergyman's church, I was married to the reporter I had met at the Masonic Ball. The clergyman's son passed his Higher Certificate and went up to Oxford, where he became a homosexual. I had a great affection for him, for many years.

“What is Jake's …
background
?” the doctor asked.

“Background?”

“Is his background the same as yours or is there a … conflict there?”

“Why do you always ask me about Jake? I come here and all you ask me is about Jake. I've only known the man for thirteen years, he's not my father, my brother, he's not even my Uncle Ted. Perhaps it's Jake you should be seeing. Not me.”

I looked at him quickly, to catch him out. He was staring rather drearily at some point in the air between us: his eyes saw so far, no further. I thought he held his sight on a leash, pulling it in or extending it at will. I wanted him to see me, but didn't know how to attract his attention. “What has Jake to do with me?” I asked, realizing too late that the question sounded biblical and absurd.

His sight retired, tortoise-like, into his head. He could now see no further than the inkstand and gold-embossed leather blotter in front of him.

“I don't want to talk about Jake,” I explained. “I want to talk about myself.”

“Carry on.” He made a vague, conducting gesture. “Please. Carry on.”

I sat for a long time, unable to think of anything. At last I said, “I'm much better, you know. By the time Jakes comes back I shall be … quite better.”

“You find the tablets a help?”

“Yes. A great help.”

“Good, good. Don't get in the habit of taking them.”

“But you told me to take two a day.”

“Yes, of course. But don't get in the habit.”

I tried again. “Don't you think I seem better?”

“Of course. Every day and in every way …” Then he became solemn. “However, you must realize that at the moment we are simply putting stepping stones, shall I say, over a raging torrent. Our task is to divert that torrent. To divert it, as it were, to some other area where it is badly needed. To do that, we must find its source. That can't be done in three or four weeks, you know. We must trace the course of the torrent.” He raised his hands, palms together, and snaked them through imaginary valleys. “We must trace the course carefully until one day, hidden under some insignificant rock, we shall come upon a small spring and then,
then
, we can talk about getting better.”

I thought about this for a few moments. Then I asked, “What torrent?”

“We might call it your will to self-destruction.”

“And we have to divert that?”

“We have to turn it into creative channels, yes.”

“I don't honestly know what you're talking about. I mean …” I frowned, trying to think of a kinder way of putting it, “I mean, I don't
have
any will to self-destruction.”

“Not consciously, of course. But the pain, the danger you experience in childbirth, for instance, isn't that…?”

“Oh, really!” I said. “It's absurd!”

He nodded, smiling, and wrote in his book.

“You can't say it's destructive to have children. Not if you want them. Not if you can keep them.”

“But there was a time when you couldn't keep them?”

“We went into that last time,” I said. “I could always keep them.”

“But at the cost of at least two marriages.”

“Let's talk about the torrent,” I said. “It really makes more sense.”

He bowed his head, and for a moment I felt sorry for him. Poor man, the butt of everyone's anger, I should be nicer to him. “Jake's parents,” I said, “were quite different from mine.”

“They're dead?”

“His mother is. She died when he was quite young, he doesn't remember her, he doesn't even know what she was like. In the photographs she looks like one of those woman novelists in the '20's, with shirt-waists and those great jackets with slits up the back, like men's. He was looked after by housekeepers, women who didn't really care. There wasn't a loving one among them. I suppose that's why he loved his father so much. I mean, he still loves him. His father treats him like a child, you know, he nags him and baits him, he keeps all the bad notices of Jake's pictures, never the good ones. But it doesn't make any difference. They're the same person. If you want to know what Jake will be like in another thirty years … there he is. He's more or less retired now, but he used to write crime stories — he wrote hundreds, they were very successful, he made a lot of money. He called himself Max English. Perhaps you read them?”

“No. No. I'm not much of a one for crime.”

“He's selfish, and mean, but… I'm very fond of him, too. He was away a lot when Jake was a child. Jake was terribly lonely. Lonely and sad at home, and at school. He was at school from the time he was six, and he hated it.”

“Did he go into the army?”

“Well, he did for about eight weeks. Before the war, when he left Oxford, he wanted to be an actor, then he went into advertising for a bit, then he was called up. But there was something wrong with his bladder, so they circumcised him, and when that didn't do any good they let him out.”

“You mean he was discharged?”

“Yes. But the bladder thing got better anyway. He says that was the unhappiest time of his life, but afterwards, when he'd left the army, he enjoyed the war. He worked in the Ministry of Information — I don't quite know what he
did
— but goodness, those were the days.”

“I don't follow you…”

“For Jake, those were the days. The shelters, the blackout, everybody not being downhearted. The war did everything for him. It did his feeling for him. I mean, nobody expected anything of
him
, do you see? The whole world was serious and tragic and full of gloom, so people like Jake were let off. It wasn't necessary for Jake to think or feel during the war, or take anything seriously, or care. He didn't have to make up his mind about anything and he was
approved
of. When he talks about the war now it's just like somebody talking about their childhood. You know? It was always summer and always strawberries for tea, there was always someone who loved you for what you were, not for what you ought to be.”

“But of course that's not true.”

“No.”

He looked up at me, smiling. “Go on. When you first met him, what was he doing?”

“He'd just begun to work in films, but he was only doing re-writes, nothing very much, he didn't even know whether he'd be able to go on. The first time I met him, he came to tea.” I hesitated, but he seemed fairly interested, so I went on. “Jake was a friend of Giles's and he came down from London, it was a Sunday. We lived in a sort of barn — I told you, I think, that's where we're building the tower — someone had begun to convert it before the war, then when the war came they just left it and we rented it for practically nothing. It was a very sensible place for us really. It was huge, there was nothing inside except a big platform, like a gallery. But it had light and water and drains, because they'd already put them in. Giles collected a lot of hardboard from somewhere — he was very practical, for a violinist — and made dozens of partitions, like loose boxes, he called them areas. So we had these areas for everything, even one for him to play the violin in, but since the walls were only about six feet high the children used to climb over them, though Giles kept telling them he'd left perfectly good pathways. After a bit they got very shaky and some of them fell down, but by that time I think Giles knew it was all over so he didn't bother to fix them up again. They were just left propped about. I was always falling over them with trays … Anyway, Jake came to tea. I was pregnant, about seven months pregnant, and I was wearing the most dreadful smock, and boots because it was so cold. It must have been chaos. It's funny, I can't remember. I can remember it happening, but not what I thought or felt or what we talked about, except that Dinah sat on Jake's knee. She was nearly four. He always liked Dinah best because her father was dead, also because she was very pretty. He told me afterwards that he fell in love with me then, that afternoon, that he wanted to make love to me. I don't know if it's true. I think he wanted to join us, that's all. I think he wanted … to belong to us.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“So he married me.”

“Yes.'

“We were very happy.”

“I'm sure you were.”

“He enjoyed everything — things that I'd got so used to, I didn't notice them any more. He used to help put them to bed — I mean, they weren't his, after all — and tell them great stories and play with them. He worked hard, perhaps in a way he worked harder than he does now, but because it was for a different reason it was easier. I find all this hard to explain. Christmas, for instance. When he was a child he hated it, he was all alone, they used to have dinner in the evening and make him wear a dinner jacket and then when the port came he was sent to bed. The first Christmas he knew us he hacked down an enormous tree, much too big, and they all carried it in and he decorated it, he made an angel for the top. Then on Christmas Day he did a play with them but they all laughed so much that… I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

“That's all right. Don't worry.”

“Now he sends his secretary to Hamleys and everything comes wrapped, and except for the youngest ones they're all bored and hating it because he does nothing but tell them how expensive it is and how meaningless. And anyway there's nothing to give. That Christmas I gave him a snow-storm, a glass ball.”

He waited for a moment. “When did his success begin? Some time ago, I take it?”

“He wrote a film about…Philpot. It was about a girl who went around breaking up people's marriages, but always by mistake, comically. It started with all the ushers in the Divorce Court saying hullo to her in the morning, because they knew her so well. It was sexy and it made people laugh. That was the beginning. It was about eight years ago.”

“And life changed.”

“Not all at once. Of course it didn't. But we bought a lot of things — furniture, machines, cars. We got help. I don't know why it's called help.”

“You mean servants?”

“We don't call them servants.”

“It must have been a relief to you.”

“At first it was. The idea of it was. I imagined I'd have more time for Jake. But we all began to live alone, that's what really happened. We got men in to paint the rooms, and we didn't have to wash up any more, the children didn't come and grate cheese or make biscuits, in the evening they watched television, but not with us, and in the afternoons they went out for walks with the help. We drove about alone in our cars and we went away for holidays without Jake, because he was working. He took an office and …”

“And what?”

“I don't know. We've managed it badly, I suppose. There's nothing left.”

He sighed, as though he thought the story had been a sad one. Then he asked abruptly, “Do you like Jake?”

“Like him?”

“Apart from everything else you feel about him, all your conflicting emotions … Do you like him?”

“No,” I said. “Not very much.”

“That's my impression. Why don't you like him?”

I tried to think. One by one I turned over the possible reasons for disliking Jake: he is a coward, a cheat, he is mean, vain, cruel, he is slovenly, he is sly. “I… I don't know,” I said.

“But you love him?”

“Yes. Yes, I love him.”

“You want your marriage to survive?”