In bed, Nell scanned in her mind the list of her friends and wondered which one she could go to, to seek advice. They hadn’t been living very long in England and didn’t have many friends, except for those neighbours where she had got drunk at Christmastime; but since then they had had their own drama: their beautiful daughter had got pregnant by some man who belonged to a religious sect and had gone off with him. She felt as she lay there that some dreadful plot was afoot, either from her husband downstairs or from Rita. She felt all the cards were stacked against her, and she was now so unclear about herself and the state of her mind, she was not sure whether perhaps Rita was correct in telling her that she imagined things and maybe Rita bore her no ill at all, and maybe her husband was sitting downstairs waiting for her to come in with open arms and say, “Darling, darling”; but these thoughts she knew also to be ridiculous. She made little resolutions, such as that she would buy a tonic, that she would buy a thermometer, because it was not enough just to feel her son’s temperature by putting her hand on his forehead. Yes, he would be sick next day, and she would sit in his room, and he would ask her those grave little questions that he always asked when he was sick, about God and dying. Once, he told her that he had had a bad dream and it was of little coffins and he and his brother were in them, each in his own coffin, doomed.
“Nonsense,” she said, “nonsense,” and she had put her arms around him; but she could feel that in some way the sadness that was going on had imparted itself to him, and one day when he was a grownup he would remember this and tell someone about his bouts of sickness, and the strange girl they had from Ireland who preferred his brother to him, and his mother always a bit forlorn. She jumped out of bed and rushed into his room; he was sound asleep, but she knew from the muttering that he was developing a fever.
The break came on one of their birthdays. The garden was full of children, children laughing and going “Bang, bang, bang!” and some of them sneaking up to the table where the eats were and touching them with their fingers. She had put a trestle table up and covered it first with red crepe paper and then with a lace cloth, her best lace cloth; it looked sumptuous. The first little setback was when Tristan, whose birthday it was, broke a glass. He was drinking his orangeade and determined to show off; to prove a point, he slammed the glass so that it split onto the cloth and onto the red crepe, and soon the cloth itself had this wandering red pigment to it. He looked around to see who had noticed, and seeing that his mother was not cross, he laughed loudly and said, “Aren’t I the brave boy not to cry?” She smiled at him and went over and began to clear up the glass, so that none of the children would cut their fingers. There was wrapping paper everywhere, and she picked it up, too, thinking how happy they were, how lighthearted. Their father had not yet appeared; the children were playing war games while Rita was going around, kissing them, tying their laces, and in every way being essential. There were jugs of orangeade, iced buns; there was an assortment of sandwiches, and later the cake. The boys much more overexcited than the girls, brandishing sticks as guns and letting out cries while the girls whimpered and went to Rita to ask for a handkerchief or to be let into the house because the boys were too rough. Once brought into the house, they immediately asked to be brought out again. Nell glanced over the wall from time to time to see if her neighbour was looming, but for three days she had not appeared at all and Nell reckoned that probably she was ill. She thought that perhaps she should knock on her door and ask if she needed any help, but she was afraid to.
It was while the party was in full swing and they were just about to light the candles, the seven candles on the pink angel cake, that her husband sauntered out, very quietly, wearing his best hound’s-tooth jacket and with a peculiar look on his face. He watched while Rita lit the candles and Tristan blew them out, and then waited as everyone sang, “Happy birthday, happy birthday to you,” but he did not join in. She knew he was going to call her. He did not call her by speaking, he just curled his finger and she followed. Inside the house he closed the door that led to the garden and she thought, This is going to be rough, maybe fatal.
“That cheque that came this morning, you haven’t signed it on the back.”
“No, and I’m not going to,” she said. The cheque was for work she had done; it was quite a substantial amount; in fact, it turned out to be a larger cheque than even she had imagined. In the past when she had worked and received money, she always gave the money over to him, but this time she decided that it was her own money and she wanted her own account.
“I’ve never heard anything so audacious in all my life,” he said.
“But it’s my money,” she said, and she knew that her voice was quaky and that there were tears welling up in her eyes, the way they welled up in her eyes as a child when she tried to explain something to her mother, tried to explain that she had not done wrong, that she had not deliberately broken a cup or spilled salt, but that it had just happened. Also, she thought, Why did I leave this cheque here for him to see; why didn’t I try to cash it somewhere and at least show my independence? One word followed another; he took a fountain pen from his pocket, dipped it in the black ink—they were in his study—and said, “Sign it, sign it!” She was adamant. Then he gripped her arm and brought her upstairs, and as they went upstairs she had this premonition that she was not going to come down in one piece. In the bedroom he closed, then locked, the door; pushed her down on the bed; his hand like a vise on her throat, as he said in a very calm voice, overcalm, “If you don’t sign it, your life will not be worth living!”
“How! How!” she said, realising that it was madness to ask him to be reasonable.
“I’ve just told you,” he said. “Your life won’t be worth living,” and then he added that he would take the children away and she could howl to the streetlights.
“You can’t! They’re both of ours!” she said, and he laughed as his fingers ground into her throat. Ridiculously, she thought of Dracula. She also felt the breath being squeezed out of her.
She got away somehow, went towards the door, and by the fact that she took the pen, she was saying that, yes, she would capitulate, she would sign it. She went down to the hall and signed her full name, even her middle name, on the cheque, went into the kitchen, looked at the children in the garden shouting and scampering about, and thought, I cannot spend another minute under this roof. She walked back into the hall, opened the creosoted cupboard where the coats were, put on her grey coat, and went out of the house, for what she knew would be forever.