He woke and, before he could remember what the hot-water bottle was doing on the pillow next to his face, the thought intruded. Thursday, the 30th of May. A day that was meant simply to slip into Friday, into the ease of late spring, and be forgotten. Would it?
The bedspread and sheet lay snagged at the bottom of the bed, rejected by at least one of them in the mugginess of the night. In the dark of the room, he could just make out, next to the vase of lilac blossom on the bedside table, the glass of water Evelyn had poured for him before bed. She’d added a few drops of peroxide from Tillie’s brown bottle in the scullery, and had made him gargle with it before sleep. Then she’d passed him a paracetamol, wrapped a towel around the hot-water bottle and laid it against his throbbing face. The procedure seemed to have worked. The swelling in his cheek had gone down. The abscess must have burst in the night. A bit of penicillin, and he’d be human again.
Last night, the tooth had been their excuse to speak no more of it – of the Bank and his news. Now she slept on, her back to him, her right arm twisted awkwardly below her head. The last time she’d spent a night like that, she’d woken with an acute case of tennis elbow, and, day after day, he’d had to help bathe her and dress her in what had become a series of oddly tender rituals.
The memory did nothing to discourage the erection he’d woken with. Nor did the whiff of peroxide from the glass or even the faint taste of pus in his mouth. He rose, toed his way blindly to the wash-stand, poured fresh water from the ewer into the basin, splashed his face and rinsed his mouth. The room was already hot for half past six. Soon, he would open the shutters and blast the room with sunshine. It seemed in the worst possible taste somehow, the weather for a summer fete at a time of mute, collective dread.
He unbuttoned his pyjama top and climbed back into bed, forcing himself to turn away from her, towards the clock, as if the steady progress of the luminescent minute hand would dispel this morning’s need, more urgent than usual. After their upset yesterday, he’d removed himself to the sitting room with a glass of brandy. His mind had clamoured suddenly for the deep escapism of sleep, but he’d dozed only fitfully, waking every few minutes to the bombardment of brass-band hymns from the Salvation Army citadel across the street.
Dinner was overcooked chops, green beans and day-old bread. The onion fiasco had spoiled her Good Housekeeping hopes. Philip had chattered, mercifully. Tarzan Finds a Son was playing at the Regent, and could he go? Orson’s big brother, Hal, had seen Tarzan when he’d dived off the board at the SS Brighton, which was before Johnny Weissmuller was Tarzan, but after he’d swum to fame at the Olympics. Now Hal was twenty years old and serving in France, but Orson said Hal said that Tarzan was still his hero because only the fittest survived in the jungle.
After dinner, Philip had played with his yo-yo in the Park while Evelyn did the washing-up. At half past eight, she called him in, got him washed and to bed. Geoffrey listened to her overhead, walking slowly from room to room, closing each set of shutters for the blackout, sealing the three of them off, as if theirs were suddenly a house of mourning. When she joined him again, the excuse of her novel and the nightly, pre-news broadcast of the national anthems of all the Allied nations relieved them both, once more, of the pressure of conversation.
She disappeared before the end of the news, busying herself with the peroxide and hot-water bottle before running a late-night bath. She said she could still smell the scorched onions in her hair; that he should get himself to bed anyway; his bottle was ready. He nodded and said, ‘Yes, why not? You relax, it’s been a long day’ – even though neither could remember the last time they hadn’t retired for the night together. If he was honest with himself, wasn’t he relieved that she had decided to spare him her tears?
Now, irrationally perhaps, he longed to bridge the distance between them. Her slip had climbed up over her thighs in her sleep. He fingered the ends of her newly washed hair, a dark tangle that smelled of her DuBerry’s shampoo. He moved closer to the arc of her back, to her vertebrae, a Braille for his fingers. Yet to wake her would mean watching the new, painful memory of yesterday cross her face, and the prospect of it unsettled him as much as his longing impelled him.
He kissed the nape of her neck, slightly salty now after the warmth of the night and the heaviness of her hair upon it. Beneath his palm, the skin on her elbow was rough; the hair on her arm, fine and soft. He ran his hand over the curve of her hip, fuller in the last few years. His testicles ached pleasurably. ‘Evvie.’
‘Hmm …’
It was not entirely disingenuous. ‘Your arm. You’re sleeping on your arm again.’
‘It’s fine …’
‘Just shift a little …’ He drew her close, wrapping her feet in his. The muscles in his calves tightened. His heart drummed in his ear.
Why, he asked himself, from the deep comfort of their bed, had he agreed to the Bank’s request? He hadn’t admitted to her that no one at Head Office had exerted pressure. On the contrary, they’d suggested he take a bit of time, mull it over, but he’d told them no – of course – someone had to be prepared. He was the branch manager. It simply made sense.
Sometimes, privately, he felt unnerved by the depth of his feeling for her. It was at odds with the moderate person he usually was. He loved her too much – needed her too much – and perhaps he was never quite sure where one feeling ended and the other began.
Had he agreed so readily to Seymour-Williams’s request simply to prove to himself that he could? Had he wanted somehow to caut-erize his heart?
If so, he was making a kind of progress, not only in the guarantee he’d given at Head Office the day before, but also in the grim business of the pills. He’d cancelled the appointment twice, prevaricating, but, at last, he’d made the necessary arrangements with Dr Moore. He’d acted rationally. He hadn’t allowed any personal weakness to stop him from taking the difficult decision that other men had taken, discreetly, for their families.
After the unconventional unhappiness of his childhood home – the secrets, the dissembling, the mournful visits to his mother in her room at Graylingwell – he had never aspired to anything more than a conventional family life. He’d wanted only an affectionate home, a shared sense of purpose, and the respect and love of his wife and son. The simple things in life were actually rather extraordinary – he’d never believed otherwise – and if he provided the life, the four walls of it, Evelyn animated their home. She was the thinker, the natural wit, the discerning eye. Next to her, he was a primitive; a blunt mass; straightforward, diligent, and clear in his judgements only because he lacked the patience for complication.
He felt a surge of being, not only in their most intimate moments, but also in seemingly unremarkable exchanges: when his palm brushed hers in the space between them on the train; when she glanced at him over the top of her book; when her voice called from the top of the stairs. It was as if her hand or glance or the shape of his name on her lips released him into life.
‘My muse,’ he’d once called her, warmly if a little self-consciously, and she’d looked up, quizzical, surprised, but delighted, as if, in that evanescent moment, he’d seen through to the beating heart of her.
He glanced behind him at the clock. Twenty minutes to seven. And again the thought, fast and sharp as the nick of a blade: what might the day bring?
‘Evvie?’ His thoughts were snapping in all directions. ‘’Morn-ing …’
She turned towards him at last.
‘My tooth is better.’
‘That’s good …’ Wifely. Perfunctory. Only at the cusp of waking.
He kissed a spot behind her ear, and she pressed her back and buttocks to him, sleepily, instinctively. Nothing, no memory of yesterday, intruded. He turned, briefly, groping for the bedside drawer – the ringing jingle of the old brass handle, the sweet, sudden scent of mahogany, his fingers grappling, then the brown paper bag and the square of waxed paper and cellophane. He concentrated on the wrapper, making a small tear with his teeth and lifting the thing free. He blew into it twice, to check it was sound, cautious as always.
‘What time is it?’ Her voice was thin, anxious. She ’d remembered.
He moved to her, hauling her gently on to his chest. She was still light-boned, small, almost breastless, and the heat of her thighs on his made him strain towards her.
‘No rubber,’ she said through the murky darkness.
‘Yes, it’s there. I’ve got it on already.’
‘Not today.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Leave it off.’
He reached out an arm and found the switch, but as his hand came away, he knocked the small white marble base; light flooded their bed, their faces, their eyes, and the heavy gold fringe of the shade trembled.
‘No more,’ she said.
He rolled her on to her side, then leaned towards her on one elbow. ‘No more what?’
‘Rubbers.’
‘I don’t under –’
‘Just no more.’
He could feel the latex wrinkling around him. He heaved himself over her, supporting his weight on his splayed hands. He closed his eyes, and rocked against her, trying to revive himself, to move past the moment. He bent low and kissed the line of her collarbone, then her shoulder, already brown with the heat of spring. He was still conscious of his infected mouth; he must keep it away from her lips. When he opened his eyes, she was staring at him, coldly, her eyes straining.
‘Evvie?’
‘I won’t have it.’
She looked at him, embarrassed, angry. ‘Precautions.’
Yesterday. It was still yesterday. The shock of his news. She squeezed her thumb and index finger to the corner of her eyes to stem the tears. The dirt under her nails distracted him briefly. How had she got dirt under her nails? She’d bathed before bed.
He didn’t expect her to reach down and slide the rubber off him. He didn’t expect her to guide him into her. He felt both strangely relieved – she wanted him, she wanted him after all – and disturbed, by her insistence, by the anger still sharp in her face, by the tears standing in her startled eyes. He tried not to think. He’d withdraw on time.
Through the shutters and the window open behind, he could hear the sounds of the new day on the Crescent and beyond: the treble of a blackbird; the heavy hoof of the pig-man’s horse in Union Road; his clamorous tipping-out of the swill-bin; Mrs Dalrymple meowing to her tortoise on her front step. The waves of pleasure and tension rose and dipped. He raised her hip in his hand and pressed her to him. A moment more, he thought, he’d allow himself just a moment more – when he withered inside her.