The Pumpkin Eater (20 page)

“As long as you like. It's Saturday.”

“What's the time?”

“Eight o'clock.”

“Your watch must have stopped.”

“No. It's eight. Look, you've been awake all night — why don't you sleep now?”

“Saturday?”

“That's right.”

“They'll all be home. You know … what started as a small affair of Jake's, nothing at all important, perhaps … perhaps it wasn't important … has grown so big, it's involved so many people — ”

“I don't think it was particularly unimportant if he was busy getting her pregnant while you were being carved up like that.”

“I never said that was when it happened! I never told you that!”

“But it's pretty obvious, isn't it? Maybe he had regrets suddenly — that he'd never be a father again.”

“Don't! That's not you! It's … Conway.”

“You said you weren't sorry for her. But it wasn't true. Well, I'm not sorry for Jake Armitage and that's the complete truth. Now what are you going to do? Stay here?”

“I behaved like Jake, you mean. But you let it happen, you didn't fight, you didn't even seem unhappy.”

“It's over, for God's sake. Are you going to stay?”

“You don't love me, do you?”

“I don't know. I haven't the ability to love you, or anyone. I can't offer you anything, I never could. That happiness you talk about all came from you, there was this great, energetic conviction that kept us all bouncing like ping-pong balls on an air-jet. Well, now you're like this … what can I do? Stay here. Sleep. I'll feed you, listen to you, do what I can. But respect my inadequacy, if you don't mind. I know who I am and what I'm like. I wouldn't want you to mistake me for anyone else.”

“I don't …”

“Don't cry. Your Jamaican may have said that we give the gift of our love to unworthy men and women, but he didn't tell you how to get it back. You can't get it back, once it's given. All you can give the Yahwehs is a seven thousandth part of a substitute, because you feel so empty and dead, having given away so much of yourself, that you must try and fool yourself that you're capable of
something
. All right. Try and fool yourself. Run about the place for a while saying you don't know who you are or what you're like or what you want. You do know. You just won't accept it. It doesn't matter, there's plenty of time.”

“No. There isn't. I can't stay, Giles.”

“Go to bed now, and sleep. Later on, I'll ring them up. I'll tell them you're here.”

“But — ”

“Don't rush into anything. Just sleep. I'll ring Jake and tell him you're with me.”

“With you?”

“I'll tell him I'm looking after you. For the time being.”

I woke in the dark — a small bed, curiously cold air. At first, but for no more than a second, I thought I was back in the nursing home. Then I even remembered where I had put Giles's dressing gown. I pulled it on as I got out of bed and groped towards the slit of light under the door. Giles was reading. He dropped the book on the floor and held out his hands, welcoming me.

“Did you ring them?” I asked.

“Yes. I spoke to Jake. I told him you were here. I told him not to worry. Do you know you've slept for eleven hours?”

“What did he say? Was he …? Did he ask why? Was he … angry?”

“No. Just worried. He thought you might have thrown yourself in the river, or something. That's what he said. He seemed very relieved to know you were here.”

“Well … I suppose that's … natural.” I didn't know what Jake would say under these circumstances. It seemed quite likely that it would be, “I thought she might have thrown herself in the river, or something.” I could hear him saying it, as though I were old tea-leaves, orange peel thrown out of a passing boat. “And the children?”

“They're all right. Dinah told them you'd gone to stay with your mother, she told them your mother was ill. She's ringing your mother to tell her she's ill. You see — it's all very simple. I lit the geyser hours ago. You can have a bath if you like. Then I'll take you out and feed you.”

“
Dinah
told them that?”

“So he said.”

“Then where does Dinah think I am?”

“She knows now. Look, children are tough. You've got a perfect right to go off if you want to. Don't worry.”

“Did he ask … when I was going back?”

“No.”

“Well … did he … Didn't he ask
why
?”

“No.”

“Nothing?”

“No. I said you'd contact him when you felt … able.”

‘You mean he said
nothing
?”

“No.”

“Oh … Can I have a drink? Are you having a drink?”

“Of course. I've been sitting here for hours, getting plastered and reading this appalling book.”

“You never used to drink.”

“Neither did you.”

“Did he sound upset, or angry, or — didn't he care?”

“Why don't you ring him yourself?”

“No — I can't.”

“Well, he can contact you any time. He's got the number and the address. It's up to him, isn't it?”

I bathed in the narrow, chipped bathtub, scoured myself with ascetic soap. I'm living my own life, God help me. I have drawn the line, gone so far and no further. Jake, Jake, what am I doing here? “You mustn't wave to him like that! He'll think you want to see him!” “Well, I do want to see him!” I want to fly from a window and pour through the air like a wind of love to raise his hair and slide into the palms of his hands. But it's up to him. My dear Ireen, what does it matter who it's up to? Well, if it doesn't matter to you, it doesn't matter to me, I'm sure. I'd only like to ask where it's got you, that's all — you've a very nasty scar there, dear, if you don't mind my saying so, and it's not a very pleasant thing when the only person you have to turn to after all these years is your ex. I wonder whether that baby will look like Jake, of course he's bound to see it, it'll be a bond between them for ever, Jake's youngest child …

“You've been crying again,” Giles said. “You should sing in the bath, not cry in it, why don't you ever do anything right? Here, have a drink.”

“I have arguments with myself.”

“About what?”

“Between the part of me that believes in things, and the part that doesn't.”

“And which wins?”

“Sometimes one. Sometimes the other.”

“Then stop arguing. Powder your nose, and we'll go out.”

When we got back to the flat after dinner, I felt sure there would be some message, some sign from Jake. There was nothing. Giles showed me his Hi-Fi — of course he had built it himself — and played records, Giles sitting with his head against my knees, his eyes closed. I believed that at any moment the doorbell or the telephone would ring. “You're arguing,” Giles said. “You're not tired. Come on, we'll go out.”

“We could go somewhere in the car, if you like.” I thought I might drive where I could see the lights of the house.

“No, we'll walk.”

We walked to the river, along the river, over bridges, past bright furniture shops and drapers, shut houses, pubs, churches, miles of railing, corridors of brick, streets, cross-roads. Giles talked, and I kept my legs moving one after the other, left, right, left, right, keeping in step. We went to bed and slept. Again, when I woke, it was nearly night-time. No, Giles said, no one had telephoned, no one had come. We went out to the same restaurant, but I paid for the meal. Afterwards, Giles suggested going to the pictures but I pretended that films, anything to do with films, distressed me. Instead, I bought a bottle of brandy and we went back to the flat.

“I've got no clothes, no make-up, no anything. What shall I do?”

“I'll go and get you some in the morning.”

“You can't, in the morning. You have to go to work.”

“I shan't go tomorrow.”

He didn't actually follow me about, but he watched me, he was always there. He watched me thinking. He heard my feelings. I said I could sleep in the armchair that night, but he made me go to bed and took a spare blanket from the cupboard for himself in the armchair. I felt so guilty about him, and so lonely, that after a while I got up and fetched him. He came with the same uncomplaining grace that he did everything, but in bed he suddenly burst into tears and clutched at me as though he were dreaming. I twisted my head, clenched my hands, calling for Jake again and again, amazed that my body was putting up no resistance. My skin grew no spurs, barbs, thorns, briers to protect it, I had no shell to shrink into — why, when the rest of me was speared like a battlefield? At last he cried my name out loud, and I knew that at that moment he thought he was alone. Then, slowly, the realization that I was there came back to him. There was nothing to say. We were both ashamed, both silent. He moved away from me. I said, “I must go in the morning.”

“Yes. I know. Where will you go?”

“I don't know. Perhaps to the tower. Perhaps … I don't know.”

He was silent for a long time. Then he got out of bed, he was standing up somewhere in the dark room. I asked whether I should put the light on.

“No. No. I've got something to tell you.”

“Well? What is it?”

He hesitated. “I've only had two feelings in my life,” he said at last. “Love for you …”

“Yes?”

“And hatred. I didn't know there was such a thing. Hatred.”

“Of course there's such a thing. Why don't you turn the light on? I can't see you.”

“I hated Jake.”

“Yes.”

“You don't understand. I've only had two feelings in my life.”

“Yes, I do understand.”

“I'm empty. You, the children … were taken by Jake. After that I was empty.”

“We weren't taken by — ”

“Yes, you were!” he shouted. The sound was abrupt and violent.

“Let me turn the light on. Please.”

“No. Leave it off. Wait till I've finished … That pitiful performance you just witnessed — God knows you couldn't take part in it — was me. Me. Myself. As I now am. Do you understand?”

“Look, you're good, Giles. You're kind. There isn't anybody like you. Just because — ”

“Good? Kind?”

“It's not fair to you if I stay here. That's all.”

“You don't mean that.”

“All right. I don't want to stay.”

“We've had this conversation before.”

“Yes. What were you going to tell me?”

There was a long silence. I didn't care what he had to tell me. In the darkness I covered my face with my hands, pressing my hands against my jaw and forehead, longing to break the bone. Nothing I could do to myself would hurt enough. Everything was an indulgence, courage and cowardice, punishment and crime, honesty and deceit; everything was corrupt; nothing, no regret, remorse, no penitence was untainted by pleasure. I might as well stay with Giles, revelling in disgust; I might as well give in. Avoid evil? There's nothing else. Nothing else in my own head. Nothing else in me.

“I lied to you about Jake,” Giles said.

“What?” I looked up, over my hands, into the darkness. “What did you say?”

“I lied to you. About Jake. He rang up … oh, half a dozen times.”

I groped for the light, turned it on. He was naked and turned with his back to me, desperately looking about for some covering.

“What do you mean? When did he ring up? When?”

He was stumbling into his clothes. “When you were asleep. Yesterday. Today … Each time I told him you didn't want to talk to him … I left the phone, as though to ask you, and went back and said you wouldn't talk to him … I was comforting him, can you believe that? Laughing my bloody head off,
comforting
him … Even
he
thinks I'm good, kind, self-sacrificing, poor bloody Giles only wants to help … Well, you came back to me, didn't you? You came back to me, didn't you? You came back to me?”

“No!”

He sat down, collapsing. I dragged on my clothes, tearing them, laddering them. In the large, mahogany-framed, mildewed mirror I saw his face sagging open, as though it had been plundered. I got my coat on, tied the belt, combed my fingers through my hair.

“Goodbye, Giles.”

“You're going home? You won't find Jake there.”

I crossed the room. As I got to the door he repeated, “Jake's not there.”

“You think I believe you?”

He leapt up and grabbed my arm. For a moment he held it tightly, then his hand dropped.

“He's gone … to his father. He went yesterday. He's been ringing you from there.”

“He wanted me to go there?”

“Yes.”

“You told him I wouldn't go?”

“Yes.” He raised his head. The faintest shadow of pleasure, almost a smile, moved across his face. “Anyway … it's too late now. His father died, this morning.”

“Let me wither and weare out mine age in a discomfortable, in an unwholesome, in a penurious prison, and so pay my debts with my bones, and recompense the wastefulness of my youth, with the beggary of mine age. Let me wither in a spittle under sharp and foul and infamous diseases, and so recompense the wantonness of my youth with that loathsomeness in mine age; yet, if God withdraw not his spiritual blessings, his Grace, his Patience, if I can call my suffering his doing, my passion his action, all this that is temporal is but a caterpiller got into one corner of my garden, but a mill-dew fallen upon one acre of my corn. The body of all, the substance of all is safe, as long as the soul is safe. But when I shall trust to that, which we call a good spirit, and God shall deject and impoverish and evacuate that spirit; when I shall rely upon a moral constancy, and God shall shake and enfeeble and enervate, destroy and demolish that constancy; when I shall think to refresh myself in the serenity and sweet air of a good conscience, and God shall call up the damps and vapours of hell itself, and spread out a cloud of diffidence, and an impenetrable crust of desperation upon my conscience; when health shall fly from me, and I shall lay hold upon riches to succour me and comfort me in my sickness, and riches shall fly from me, and I shall snatch after favour and good opinion to comfort me in my poverty; when even this good opinion shall leave me, and calumnies and misinformations shall prevail against me; when I shall need peace, because there is none but thou, O Lord, that should stand for me, and then shall find that all the wounds I have come from thy hand, all the arrows that stick in me, from thy quiver; when I shall see that because I have given myself to my corrupt nature, thou hast changed thine; and because I am all evil towards thee, therefore thou has given over being good towards me; when it comes to this height, that the fever is not in the humors, but in the spirits, that mine enemy is not an imaginary enemy, fortune, nor a transitory enemy, malice in great persons, but a real and an irresistible and an inexorable and an everlasting enemy, the Lord of Hosts himself, the Almighty God himself, the Almighty God himself only knows the weight of this affliction, and except he put in that
pondus gloriae
, that exceeding weight of an eternal glory, with his own hand into the other scale, we are weighed down, we are swallowed up, irreparably, irrevocably, irrevocably, irremediably…”