The Pumpkin Eater (18 page)

“We thought it would be rather fun,” the young man said, “if you told us what you think about the Bomb. I mean, you do have all these children, don't you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That's splendid.” He settled himself a little more easily into the sofa. I felt that he had not been absolutely certain that this was the right house. “I was so sorry to hear you'd not been well.”

I lifted a cigarette out of the box on the desk, read the brand name printed round the top — Jake now smoked Gauloise — and shut the lid of the box carefully.

“How did you hear that?”

“Your husband's secretary told me. On the telephone.”

“You telephoned?”

“To make an appointment. The secretary said — ”

“That I was always in in the afternoons?”

“Yes. That's right. She said you were always here in the afternoons.”

“You told her … what you wanted?”

“But naturally.”

I lit the cigarette and looked out of the window. In the next garden but one, a woman was hanging washing on the line; dust from the partially demolished house on her other side would blow on to her washing. Twelve years ago, you know, there were many ruins round here, willow herb grew in the remains of dining rooms. Then the houses were rebuilt, their scars were patched, skirtings, spandrils, treads and risers washed, prepared and painted, sashes and beading renewed, soffits, reveals and sills replastered, slates and flashing replaced and repaired. All the garden walls were built again for neighbours to lean against and children to run on over the new ramblers and virginia creeper. Only last year I could look out of the window and see nothing but gardens, Pakistanis drip-drying their shirts, children swinging, typists lying in the sun. Now, as I looked, an entire wall tottered and fell. The woman at the clothes line hesitated for a moment before reaching for another clothes peg from her apron pocket.

I wondered whether it was worth telling the young man that where those straight houses had stood, holding families and 'cellists and old, exhausted Jews on every floor, they were now building cottages for company directors, with glazed front doors and wrought-iron shoe-scrapers. Would he think it was fun? I looked at him and he said, “Anyway, I hope you feel better now.”

“Thank you. Yes.”

“How long have you been out of hospital?”

“About six weeks. But it was a nursing home.”

“It sounds much comfier.” He smiled hopefully over the back of the sofa, screwing himself round, since I was standing behind him.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't ask you if you smoke…”

“No. No, I don't, thank you.”

I walked over to the fireplace, so that he could straighten himself out. He was very young indeed: probably about the same age as my eldest child. He stroked his small camera tenderly for a moment, then said, “Of course my own view is that it does us a lot of good to live in a state of insecurity. I'm all for it.” He waited, it seemed to me eagerly, but I didn't answer. His face clouded like a boy whose firework has failed to go off. “Doesn't that make you angry?”

“If I were fifteen years younger, or you were fifteen years older, it would make me angry. As it is …” I tried to smile, but he was bitterly offended and bridled, girlish. Oh well, he was longing to say, if that's what you think! I was sorry to have hurt him; he, after all, had done me no harm. I sat down, scraping at a bit of plasticine embedded in the chair with my thumbnail.

“I'm very frightened,” I said. “Not for myself. I don't mind for myself.”

“For your children.”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“Why?” I asked. But he looked back at me with perfect calm, unsmiling, his hands hanging between his narrow thighs, his toes pointed outwards, the upper part of his body concave, relaxed as a tramp on a park bench. “Well…” I said. “For them it will be … For them … If they survive…”

“You mean Strontium 90,” he said, “and all that jazz.”

“Yes.”

“But you
know
that's all wildly exaggerated. Remember that scare last year? I mean you're not worrying about the
milk
or anything, are you?”

I nodded. I was worrying about the milk, about my children falling in love, about the creatures who crawled through the dark towards us, their ancestors, their loving assassins, breathing “Why?” like a cold wind. “Yes,” I said. “I worry a bit about the milk.”

“And what do you do about it?”

“Nothing,” I said.

His expression was pleased. I stopped looking at him and said, working at the plasticine, “It's like everything, isn't it? … If you're a Christian you can … put your affairs in order. I suppose you can be kinder to everyone. Be loving. Try to make your soul perfect. Try to make everyone happier.” I glanced up at him, keeping my head down. His face was stony. “But if you're not, then you can either eat and drink and be merry or just … go on living with it. But you have to change.”

“Do you?”

“Of course. It's a different … climate. You have to change.”

He disliked me now. “And how have you — changed?”

I threw a grain of plasticine into the empty grate behind the electric fire. “You should talk to Dinah,” I said. “She paints Ban the Bomb on everything.”

“Dinah?”

“My — one of my daughters.”

“How old is she?”

“Seventeen.”

“Oh, well,” he said, “at that age…” He was about twenty-three. “I suppose she sits down all over the place?”

“No. She just paints Ban the Bomb. And wears a badge of course. She was a Deist, but there's no badge for that. It makes a difference.”

“You ought to approve of her, feeling as you do.”

“I do approve of her. If they had badges for being against … capital punishment or the colour bar, or badges for protesting about there being no houses for people to live in — ”

“She'd wear the lot, I suppose.”

“Certainly.” I was tired of his unshakeable middle age. “She also belongs to a number of fan clubs.”

“Does she, indeed?”

He lifted his camera, aimed and shot. I heard Josephine, the new nurse, coming down the stairs. She tapped on the door and only after I had called “Come in” was my youngest child, my last child, allowed to enter. She walked two feet, the extent of her leather reins, and the nurse said, “Say goodbye Mummy,” from outside the door. This nurse would not come into what she called the drawing room except by request. The little girl looked at the young man and her harness tinkled like Christmas. He swivelled round and shot her over the back of the sofa. She blinked and looked for the nurse, who tugged her gently backwards.

“And how old is this one?” the young man asked.

“Four.”

“We're just four,” the nurse sang, invisible. “Just four, aren't we?”

The child swayed about on the end of her tether and scratched her angora bonnet with a mittened fist. Whatever she wanted to do, walk or scratch or keep quiet or pee at irregular hours, she was prevented. My mother thought her a dull child. There was nothing wrong with her except her upbringing and the fact that she believed me to be always ill.

“Goodbye,” I said. “Have a nice walk.”

“Where are all the others?” the young man asked.

“At school.”

“But there are some … older?”

“Yes.”

“Where are they?”

“They're … away.”

“In view of your feelings about the bomb — forgive me, but it's quite a point — will you have any more? Children, I mean.”

“This is a picture of the tower,” I said. “We built a … tower in the country.” I took the photograph from the mantelpiece and gave it to him, commanding him to take it. There it is, a permanent, indestructible and freehold tower, built for our grandchildren to laugh at in their middle age. There were heaps of rubble in the foreground, we were keeping it to grind into hoggin for the paths. Against fast-moving clouds the tower seemed to be falling, but in the picture the clouds were frozen into white puffs and the tower stood straight, closed, complete, like an unopened crocus. He glanced at it briefly.

“Very interesting. What made you build a tower?”

“I don't know. We couldn't buy much land. We had a lot of people to … It goes up and up, you see.”

“Your local council must be very enlightened.”

“There are lots of towers about. Bell towers, watch towers and so on. It's not very enlightened really.”

“You go there at the weekends, I take it?”

“Yes. We shall. It's only just finished. We shall be there all summer.”

I put the photograph back on the mantelpiece. I didn't want him to ask me any more questions. The telephone began to ring and he brightened up, looking at it eagerly as though it were speaking to him.

“Your telephone,” he said.

“I'm sorry.”

“No, go ahead. Go ahead. I'll take some pictures.”

If I had been alone, I wouldn't have answered it. I lifted the receiver slowly. The young man sat on the floor and shot up at me.

“Hullo?”

“Mrs. Armitage, please.”

I panicked. The camera clicked and whirred. “No. She's not here. I'm afraid she's out.”

There was only the slightest hesitation. “That's you, isn't it?”

“I don't know what you mean.” The young man was staring at me, his mouth loosely open. “Mrs. Armitage is — ”

“All right. Give her a message. Tell her Beth Conway's pregnant.”

I was looking into the little black hole of the re-receiver; it was full of grains of tobacco and dust. I heard Conway's breathing, rasping, regular.

“I'll … tell her.”

“It's not mine. I thought she might be interested.”

I sat down, holding the receiver in both hands. The young man was up on the window sill.

“You'll get rid of it,” I said.

“Oh, no, Mrs. A. Oh, no. I'm not giving her that pleasure.”

“What?” The young man darted forward and held a light-register against my face.

“She's going to have this kid in a public ward and if there's any way of stopping her getting a whiff of gas, I'll find it. She's going to wipe its bottom and stare at its ugly mug for the rest of her young life. There's going to be no more movies, no more champagne, no more hair-do's, no more sexy clothes for my little Beth. This kid's going to kill her. I've told her that. This kid's going to make her curse Jake Armitage for the rest of her days. I'm going to see that this kid turns her into an old hag, and if you saw her now you'd know that's not too difficult.”

“No,” I said. “No. You can't — ”

“So you want her to get off scot-free, do you? You're on the forgive and forget jag in the Armitage household. Well, I'm no fool. She'd be off with him again in a couple of weeks.”

“No — ” The young man was machine-gunning me from the end of the room. I turned my back on him, huddling over the telephone.

“Or someone else, then. I'm fixing it so she's harmless, you understand? I'm going to make her learn typing and work for it. She's going to hate that kid almost as much as I shall. How's that for justice?”

“Is there anything … you want us to do?”

“Tell your bloody husband to keep out of my way, that's all, or by Jesus — ”

I put the receiver down. The young man asked loftily, “Is anything the matter?”

“No. No. Of course not.” I couldn't look at him. I couldn't breathe. For the first time I understood the meaning of impossibility. “Is there anything else you want to ask me?”

“I don't know, really.”

“Then perhaps…”

He remembered just in time. “Would you,” he asked, “keep cyanide capsules in your medicine cupboard?”

I turned to him. I didn't remember what he was talking about. I shook my head.

“Then really you would sooner feel that your children were suffering than dead?”

“Nobody … would keep cyanide in a medicine cupboard.”

“But would you kill them,” he demanded impatiently, “if they were certain to be maimed for life?”

“Maimed?”

“Mentally or physically injured. For life.”

“I think any child … any child … would be better off … dead.”

“I thought,” he said, “that you might.” He snapped his camera shut. “And does your husband share that view?”

“What view?”

“Your pessimism.”

“I don't understand.”

He strangled his fist in the camera strap. “Your attitude to the
bomb
,” he croaked, and cleared his throat.

“No,” I said. “Jake believes that we must live on the assumption that we are going on living. Jake believes in the inevitability of life.”

He stared at me for a moment, openly; then his blank eyes slowly filled with thought. He was seeing himself on his way, bowling through the park in his Mini-minor, beautifully smiling at old ladies on zebra crossings; whistling, probably, to keep his spirits up. Holding the camera in both hands, he sprang athletically to his feet.

“Well,” he said, “it was extremely kind of you to see me.”

“Do you think life's inevitable?” I asked.

Now it was he who said, “I really don't know,” hurrying out because he thought I was mad. I got up and followed him down the hall. He opened the front door and started down the steps, running sideways.

“Do you think life's inevitable?” I asked.

He was out of the gate, plunging head-first into his little scarlet car.

“Do you think life's inevitable?” I shouted.

The car spat away like a red hot cinder. A small boy stopped in the gateway; he watched me steadily, still as a cat. I looked at him from the top of the steps. He had pale blue eyes and red hair and was clutching a brown carrier bag; his shorts were two skirts over his fat knees. I moved as though to attack him, suddenly. He ran away very fast, wailing up the empty street like a coward.