In the night he heard Karen get up to the children. He feigned sleep, as he had when they were babies. His conscience nagged him because Karen had to get up for work in the morning while he, ostensibly, could stay in bed as long as he liked. He salved his conscience by taking Karen in his arms when she came back to bed, cold as ice having gone upstairs in her nightie.
In the morning she was up and dressed before he was awake. He watched her through slit-open eyes.
“Can you cope? There’s some plaice fillets and jelly. I don’t suppose they’ll eat much. Do you think I should stay at home?”
“Not at all.”
“They might be a bit cantankerous.”
“Don’t worry.”
“You can always ring me.”
“Of course.”
“Did Marie-Céleste say there was anything we should do when the spots appeared?”
“I’m not sure. I could ask.”
She picked up her handbag. “Don’t forget the jelly. That should slip down easily. I’ve made them as comfortable as possible. I’ll run up and say goodbye, then I’m off.”
“Not to worry,” Oscar said.
“I do.”
“No need.”
He heard her go upstairs and Rosy’s voice: “You’ve kissed Daisy two times. Now kiss me!”
She thought of everything. None of them lacked for interesting food or clean socks; there were always fresh flowers in the house. Not like Dr Adler’s flowers. Karen’s was a massed arrangement in one huge vase in the living-room, varying with the seasons from lilac to chrysanthemums. At Dr Adler’s they were scattered in interesting Provençal pots, murky greens and browns holding a few seasonal blooms, changed frequently.
He heard Karen shut the front door and dialled Marie-Céleste’s number. The brisk secretary answered.
“Hallo, this is Mr John…” He heard Karen’s key in the door and put down the receiver. She ran upstairs.
“Car keys! What bag was I using yesterday?” She removed clothing from chairs and riffled her dressing-table. “Who phoned?”
“No one.”
“I thought I heard it tinkle.”
“No–”
“Ah!”
“Where were they?”
“In the pocket of my tweed coat.” She blew him a kiss. “Bye.”
“Bye.”
“He waited until the sound of the car had disappeared down the road. He dialled the number again.
“This is Mr John. I’m sorry, I think we were cut off. I wondered if Dr Burns would visit…measles…” He wanted to make sure she was coming.
“You had a visit yesterday,” the voice accused.
“The rash has come out. It’s terrible!”
“Dr Burns is frightfully busy. She doesn’t visit measles twice unless there are complications, Mr John.”
“There are complications.”
“Can you tell me what they are?”
He thought hard. “Earache,” he said and then again triumphantly: “Yes. Definitely earache!”
“Very well. I can’t tell you when it will be.”
“I shall be here all day; until 2.30,” he added. “It’s not likely to be later?”
“We can’t guarantee a time. My other line is ringing, Mr John.”
He hung up.
‘Complications’ was putting it mildly. He had dreamed of her all night; even the remembrance produced a quickened pulse rate, the ache in his brain. He read the papers, but found he did not take in one word. He got up, bathed, shaved and looked critically in the mirror at his hair. He wondered whether he shouldn’t perhaps go to one of these trendy hairdressers which were springing up all over the place, instead of to Mr Snead with his short back and sides, girly magazines and packets of superfine Durex, who had been cutting his hair for as long as he remembered. Many of his friends had succumbed, he knew, to the toupé, the knitted-in hair, the tight-fitting suit, hoping to look like Peter Pans. Personally he thought it gave them an odd appearance; Petered out Pansies was more like it. He stood naked before the full-length mirror and breathed in. Perhaps he should go to a gym, get those muscles tautened up; too lazy. Exercise at home; no self-discipline. Take up tennis, squash. He had a healthy disregard for sport. Macrobiotic foods perhaps? What about poor Dick Nolan who ate that disgusting Swiss stuff for breakfast and dropped down dead at forty-five? He knew he was using his return ticket. His insurance agent had tactfully pointed out quite recently that there was less time ahead of him than behind. He dared to acknowledge to himself the fact that he would not now make a judo blackbelt, speak French like a native, be offered the editorship of the New Statesman or a chair at Oxford. He would not seduce Diana Rigg, drive like Jacky Stewart or sing like Engelbert Humperdinck. Neither would he retire to the Cayman Isles (to which of course he would have sent all his money), punch Michael Parkinson on the nose, make the front cover of Private Eye. Already he was older than the leader of the Liberal party as well as policemen, traffic wardens, doctors, dentists, solicitors, accountants, stockbrockers and bank managers, all of whom he had looked up to, not so very long ago, as father figures. It was not a very palatable state of affairs. He realized that he would earn in a lifetime slightly more than a pop star earned in a year. To this mirror image he pretended that he had come to terms with his own mediocrity; that he could not return for a second try. What had he achieved? Wife, family, small fame as an author. There was little chance now that he would write Gone With the Wind, fill the Albert Hall, publish his memoirs in the Sunday heavies.
He pulled himself together. He knew his limitations, which was more than some people did. He refused to cherish the intimations of genius, become the connoisseur of unfulfilled dreams, the hoarder of unacted impulses, the squanderer of uncounted hours who finds his forties an age of disillusion. He was perhaps treading water a bit desperately on the river which was rushing to the weir. But there was as yet no need to panic, to consider the final obscenity; or was there?
He tried hard to imagine himself dead; a condition of nonbeing. He could not, and pronounced himself to himself as indispensable. Making a silent vow to cut down to 1000 calories a day, he put on his underpants and decided on two eggs sitting between two rashers and a couple of slices of fried bread for breakfast.
He put his dishes in the dishwasher, pretending that it was capable of getting the frying pan clean, and went to Rosy and Daisy. They were covered with red spots.
“I’ve got more than she has,” Rosy said.
“Liar! My tummy’s smothered.”
“We’re not counting tummies.”
“Is Snow White coming?”
“Snow White?”
“Doctor Burns. She smells yummy.”
“I’ve got a ‘yummy tummy’.”
They dissolved into paroxysms of laughter.
“She’ll be along later. Don’t you think you should have a sleep?”
“Just because you want to write your old book. You can’t wait for us to get married, can you? I think your books are ever so boring. I don’t know how anyone can read them.”
“Thanks, pal.”
“I don’t mean it in a horrid way. I mean…”
“I know, I know.” He tried tucking her bedclothes in as a gesture of paternal duty.
“I don’t like it tucked in.” She pulled the blankets out again. “I like it all messy. Rosy likes to be tucked in.”
“Of course.”
“For a writer I don’t think you’ve got a very good memory.”
“He just copies great chunks out of other people’s books,” Rosy said scathingly, submitting to the tucking in which hurt Oscar’s back.
“I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”
“Paints and cutting out.”
His heart sank.
“Rest for a bit, then I’ll organize it.”
“We’ve been resting all night.”
“I don’t suppose it will actually kill you to get out of bed and get what you want yourselves.”
“Mummy said we had to stay in bed.”
“We’ll ask Snow White. Do you think she’ll be wearing the same dress or washing it in Persil?”
Oscar wondered himself.
“We’ll wait till she comes, anyway,” he said firmly. “Now just be good girls for a bit. Play twenty questions or geography endings.” He admired his wit and invention.
“We always get stuck on the ‘A’s” Rosy said.
“And she says Aston Villa is a place!”
He sat at his typewriter and wondered if he was going to attempt the seduction of Marie-Céleste and how and when. It was all very well in books, but they seemed to gloss over the practical difficulties. First, Rosy and Daisy; not that they would be at home for ever. A hotel; didn’t fancy all the false registering, took the spontaneity out of it. Of course the whole thing was to be at a purely sexual level. He was not in love with Marie-Céleste, he desired her. There was no question of running away. The Gauguin bit did not appeal to him. He couldn’t paint and disliked anything other than a short stay in foreign parts. In any case he would miss the children. Carpe diem, Horace had said. Live a little. It would hurt no one. He would be circumspect. Oh yes, he would be circumspect.
He did not think he would write that morning. Each time he tried to concentrate his mind slipped back to Marie-Céleste. He tried a few words as if testing the typewriter; his fingers went faster as the words started to flow. He had written 1000 words when the doorbell rang. His stomach turned to water; his legs felt weak. He had forgotten to spruce himself up. The newsprint from the morning papers had left his fingers black. He ran down the stairs smoothing his hair. It was the chops for dinner. He looked at the package thrust into his hand uncomprehendingly.
“Butcher!” the delivery boy with long hair and beard said to him in the tone of voice one uses to the elderly and deaf.
He put the chops in the fridge next to two drying egg yolks in a margarine tub and the jelly Karen had made for the children’s lunch.
“Daddy, was that Snow White?” came a voice from upstairs.
“No.”
“Who was it then? We’re ever so bored.”
“Butcher.”
“I’m thirsty, so’s Daisy.”
“I’ll bring you up something. What would you like?”
“A milk shake like Mummy makes. Chocolate.”
He knew that it had to do with assembling the blender and cubes of ice.
“I’ll bring you some barley water.”
There was a pause and a muffled conference.
“All right. If we can have bendy straws.”
He poured out the barley water and looked for the bendy straws. He searched every drawer, disturbing tea towels, cookery books, cutlery, kitchen utensils, hammer and nails, tinfoil and freezer bags, candles with pink plastic holders for birthday cakes.
He took the two glasses upstairs.
“There aren’t any bendy straws. You’ll have to manage.”
“Mummy left them up here,” Rosy said. “She knew you’d never find them.”
He wondered why he didn’t go out to work from 9-till-5 like other men.
The bell rang.
“There’s someone at the front door,” Daisy said. The second person that morning to imply that he was losing his faculties.
“I hope it’s Snow White.”
He ran down the two flights of stairs and saw her silhouetted against the amber glass lights. She wore a tweed coat with a tie belt. He held the door open. He would have to ask her what perfume it was that sent him crazy.
She followed him into the living-room where he made a half hearted attempt to tidy yesterday’s papers and remove the core of the apple he had eaten before going to bed. He had forgotten that Mrs Hubble wasn’t coming until two.
“Complications?” she said. “What kind?”
“The worst.” He helped her off with her coat. Her skirt was of the same material as the coat; the sweater toned.
She waited for him to explain.
“I’ve been awake all night.”
“I hope you’re not getting measles.”
“Measles? That would be easy. Something far worse than any measles you ever saw. I can’t get you out of my mind.”
“I couldn’t sleep either.”
He liked her straightforwardness. Her honest approach to the whole thing.
He moved towards her and investigated her mouth with his tongue. Their bodies were close all the way down, his hard against her. He tilted his head back to say: “If the children weren’t here I’d take all your clothes off. Can’t they go back to school?”
She shook her head. “Do you have to stay in all day?”
“Mrs Hubble comes from 2 till 5. She cleans up.”
“There’s no one in my flat in the afternoons.”
There was a complication; Dr Adler. He wondered if he should tell her and decided against it.
A voice called: “Was it Snow White?”
“Who’s Snow White?”
“You. Your white dress.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. He would get round the Dr Adler problem somehow.
“Tomorrow.” She picked up her case.
“I’ll go up to the children.”
“I’d rather you stayed with me.”
“Earache, my secretary said.”
“It’s not my ears that ache.”
“I meant the children.”
“Yes, of course. Earache.”
“Did it keep them awake?”
“Not them.”
He held her again, covering her face with kisses and felt a physical and psychical involvement he had not experienced in years.
“You go. I’ll be up in a minute.” He wanted to collect the fragmented parts of himself.
“I don’t know if I can make it on my own.” Her voice was strained.
“We’ll go together.”
“Why haven’t you got your white dress on?” Rosy said.
“It just didn’t feel like a white dress day.”
“She still smells nice,” Daisy said. “Are you going to do me first today?”
“If you like.” She sat on Daisy’s bed and looked at the empty glass at the bottom of which was a chewed and crumpled straw.
“Are you drinking plenty?”
“We wanted a milk shake but Daddy couldn’t make it,” Daisy said accusingly.
“What about appetite?”
“We’re starving.” Daisy turned her head to one side while Marie-Céleste examined her ear.
“We’ve decided what we want for lunch,” she said looking at Oscar with the one eye available in the circumstances. “We’ll have chicken pies and baked beans and chips, and ice cream with chocolate sauce for afters.”
“Mummy left you fillets of plaice and jelly.”
“She said we could have anything we liked, didn’t she?” she asked Rosy.
“Anything. I might even fancy a hamburger in a bun with raspberry jam.”
He knew they were playing him off against Marie-Céleste. It was an old game. They usually did it with Karen.
“Ears all clear,” Marie-Céleste said. “I think plaice fillets and jelly would be fine for today.”
They looked at her, round-eyed with disappointment.
“Will you wear your Snow White dress tomorrow?” Daisy asked by way of compromise.
She looked at Oscar. “I probably shan’t be coming tomorrow. You’re both getting on fine.”
“A girl in my class went blind after measles,” Daisy said.
“She’s a liar!” Rosy said. “She had a terrible, terrible headache and they had to make a hole in her head anyway she can see a bit with those pebbly glasses if she holds the book very close.”
Marie-Céleste said: “You’re both on the mend and you’re not going to go blind or anything horrid like that. You can probably get up for a bit tomorrow if your temperatures stay down.”
“Daddy doesn’t like lady doctors, do you Daddy?” Rosy said.
“He says they don’t know anything!”
“I know enough to treat measles,” Marie-Céleste said. “But if you like I can send Dr Powell tomorrow.”
They both said “Yuk”, and buried their heads in the bedclothes.
When Rosy emerged she said: “You’re probably different. Daddy meant the lumpy ones with the lace-up shoes we have at school. We have to line up in our vests and knickers with all the boys and when you get there you have to take your vest off while she puts that cold thing on your chest.”
“It’s horrible. Then you have to cover up one eye and read letters and walk across the room in a straight line. Michael Woodgate had nits.”
“They shaved his head.”
“He looks ever so funny.”
“Poor Michael Woodgate,” Marie-Céleste said, putting away her stethoscope.
“When can we go back to school?”
“I don’t think it will be much before a couple of weeks.”
“We don’t want to go back to school!”
“I thought you couldn’t wait.”
“School’s horrid.”
“Everybody had to go to school.”
Rosy sighed and looked at Daisy. They had imagined Snow White to be different, someone special, but she was like all other grown-ups.
Daisy looked into the pocket mirror she kept by her bed.
“Will I be scarred for life?”
“Only a few days. The rash will gradually fade.”
“Marcia Cook’s got little holes all over her face.”
“She probably had chickenpox.”
“She did. She nearly died.”
“Well, you won’t have any marks at all and should be up and about in a day or two, then your poor father won’t have to run up to you every five minutes.”
They caught each other’s eyes and sniggered.
He followed Marie-Céleste downstairs.
“About tomorrow…?”
“My flat? The housekeeper leaves at 2.”
He thought of Dr Adler.
“I can’t. The children…”
“I thought your cleaning lady came in the afternoons.”
“She does.”
“OK.”
“No look, it’s not that, it’s not quite so easy, you see…”
“Yes.”
“No you don’t. What about just after 4?”
“Evening surgery.”
He thought. “I’ll come at 3.”
“I’m glad.”
She did not question his indecision.
He helped her on with her coat, kissing her ears.
“I don’t know where you live.”
She gave him a card. “Seventh floor. Ring the entry phone twice…”
“Marie-Céleste.”
“Yes.”
“Nothing. Just Marie-Céleste.”
She didn’t pat her hair or fidget with her clothes. Just looked at him in a way that knocked him senseless as he opened the door.
Dr Adler was going to be difficult. If he missed his session he would have to pay. Three until 10 to 4 daily was reserved for him, Oscar John, and he could avail himself of it or not. He had until now, apart from minor lapses, availed himself of it. He went into the kitchen. Having been disturbed in all respects from his writing he saw no point in returning to it until after lunch. That way he would only have to pick up the threads again once. He made the opening moves for the plaice fillets and jelly and thought about Marie-Céleste and tomorrow. He knew that, had she acted like an eighteen-year-old, expecting to be wooed, courted, wined, dined, keeping him guessing the while, he would probably have chickened out. Her directness appealed to him. He had called into the forest ‘qua’ male and she had replied ‘qua’ female. He thought of Karen. Holding a plaice fillet in each hand he put them down on the table, one at each end. Karen and Marie-Céleste. In the middle he set the frying pan – himself. The fillets had nothing to do one with the other. He loved Karen no less, could not live, or was it manage, without her; he did not love Marie-Céleste, merely wanted to possess her. He had other possessions; his car, his typewriter, his books; his ownership of them, touching them, spending time with them, did not affect his relationship with his wife. He would take care that it would be the same with Marie-Céleste. He would never do anything to hurt Karen; never had done and was not going to begin now.
Putting the fish into the frying pan he wondered whether he had frustrated-housewife syndrome, only in his case the milkman wasn’t much use. A lonely business writing, sitting by himself at home all day, most days anyway, fantasizing like mad and hurling his fantasies down on to the paper as if the devil himself were after him. Sometimes he didn’t talk to a soul all day except Dr Adler, but you couldn’t count that; it was as one-sided as the writing except of course when the oracle decided to speak and that was hardly communication. He felt sorry for them really, housewives, baking their cakes and washing their curtains with only Jimmy Young for company or Terry Wogan with his nauseous fight against flab. Of course now they had Mss Greer, Friedan and Millett on their side, but the cakes would still have to be baked somehow and the curtains weren’t going to wash themselves. Despite his occasional loneliness he thought it eminently sensible of Karen to work. She came home refreshed and stimulated, and they lacked neither cakes nor clean curtains. Sometimes, particularly in winter, he’d feel sorry for her; staggering home tired after a busy day, laden with plastic bags heavy with goods for which she had stretched and reached and waited at checkout counters. Then he’d make her tea, put away the shopping, listen to the stories which gradually came out about events of the day in Devonshire Place. With her second wind she listened to Rosy and Daisy and what they had done at school and why they would need packed lunch tomorrow and twenty-five pence for the Cutty Sark, and she’d start making preparations for dinner while listening to how his writing had gone or not gone as the case was, and the slow change was wrought from career woman to earth mother, her family gathered around in the safety of her kitchen from where she would defend them against all-comers.
The plaice were now bubbling and smelled good and he began to wish there was one for himself. He ignored the shouts from upstairs of what was said to be hunger but what, he guessed, was really boredom, and began to assemble the trays and spoons and sauces, tomato and tartare, and blackcurrant jam (Rosy!) as he had no intention of being caught out and having to come all the way down again for ‘fancies’. He took the jelly which wasn’t quite set out of the fridge and the cream that was left from the weekend. The cooker was getting in a bit of a mess from the frying pan but Mrs Hubble would cope with that. He wondered if she would wash his red sweater and if it would be dry by the next day. Marie-Céleste always looked so elegant…one piece of plaice had got burned somehow. He turned it over and put it on the plate hoping that one of them mightn’t notice…
“Daddy, there’s something burning…!”
“It’s the jelly!”
Silence. No man was a comedian in his own home. Sometimes the critics called certain passages in his books riotous. He’d always had a keen sense of humour.
He switched off the gas and, eyeing the load on the table, wondered whether he could make it all in one go. Even if he couldn’t it was good for his spare tyre without which he could well have done this week.
It took not two journeys, but what seemed like twenty-two. In any case he lost count. Now that the spots were out their energies had quite returned, and when the doorbell rang at 2 o’clock he almost threw his arms round Mrs Hubble’s neck.
He whistled all the way to Dr Adler’s, perhaps because the sun was shining.
‘In the spring a young man’s fancy…’ Hey, hold your horses. ‘In the spring an old man’s fancy lightly turned to thoughts of lust!’
‘Old’ of course was relative, and it wasn’t even spring. He pulled in his tummy and tested himself on a woman wheeling a trolley to the shops. He smiled seductively, wondering whether it would make her day.
Dr Adler lived in the part of Hampstead where there were more analysts to the square inch than anywhere else in the world, although rumour had it that owing to the rising price of houses they were gradually being forced towards Golders Green. His house was halfway up the hill between Finchley Road and the Heath, making Oscar think of the Grand Old Duke of York of his schooldays. Not that there was anything of the Grand Old Duke about Dr Adler. He was totally nondescript, in appearance at any rate. Not much, if anything, over five-foot-five, immemorably dressed in what always seemed to be the same suit and tie or variations thereof so subtle they did not count, softly spoken, making no sound when he moved, his face and voice expressionless. He could have been from the local council, the tax inspector’s office or an insurance salesman. You passed him in the street, pushed by him in the cinema by the gross. If you stared too hard he would, Oscar thought, have disappeared into thin air. His house was as nondescript as himself. Untended roses almost obliterated the path in summer; now the daffodils, which had naturalized themselves for want of attention and which would on no account at the end of the season get neatly tied in knots, were beginning to show their spikes.
As he approached, Oscar, from habit, began the countdown. Fifty-three, fifty-one, forty-nine, forty-seven… he often wondered whether he was watched everyday treading the same path, and if the watchers speculated as to where he was going. He had no plastic bag so it could not be Heath Street and the launderette; no dog on a lead for walks. Perhaps they imagined him, an actor, taking a constitutional before the evening performance which suddenly reminded him that although he did not want to he would have to talk about Marie-Céleste. He did not want to share her; not even with his éminence grise; wanted to keep her strictly to himself; but analysis was analysis; like football, worse than football, there were rules.
He looked at his watch. Three minutes late, not late for his session but late for him; that had been Rosy and Daisy and not being able to find the pot of paste for cutting out. This girl with the rimless glasses was already hurrying down the path. For three years they had passed but never spoken. He didn’t know what madness possessed him.
“Warmed it up for me?” he said to her at the gate.
She stood motionless; shattered. He had probably put her back two years.
“You’ll have to tell,” he said.