Such Men Are Dangerous (23 page)

“Of course. Though I should add that at the moment I don’t object to being considered dangerous. It throws me into rather good company.”

“Dangerous company. It sounds like you’ve read that editorial?”

“Indeed I have. It made me very angry.”

“
Simon says
…”

“Pure jealousy.”

“I don’t know about that. There could be truth in it.”

“Well, my next remark isn’t going to help. And who cares, in any case?”

“What is your next remark?”

“You’ve spoken about God having chosen those two Heath boys and what an appropriate choice he made.”

“Did
I
say that? How patronizing! Forgive me, Lord.”

“But do you know what occurred to me? It might have been
you
, not them, whom God was choosing.”

“No. Don’t say that!”

“Too late. Already have. Yet if it makes it any easier to listen to I can modify it slightly. You
as well as
them.”

“Geraldine, stop! You’re appealing to my basest instincts.”

“As I’ve already suggested, that’s irrelevant. And, anyway, base instincts were made to overcome. Lucky you! It seems to me you have an interesting array of challenges to rise to.” Her tone remained light. “But to revert to more prosaic things. Would you mind if I returned to Scunthorpe for the weekend?”

“No, of course not. Why on earth should I?”

“Because by now it must be fairly obvious I’m throwing myself at your head and I wanted to discover your attitude towards women who do that.”

He considered. “Well, in the normal way, I reach for my running shoes. In this case, however, I don’t feel any particular urge to do so. Not yet. Is that a satisfactory answer?”

“Yes, thank you. Perhaps a
trifle
unenthusiastic but satisfactory. May I just ask: is there anyone else at the moment?”

“No. No one since my wife.”

“When did she…?” Geraldine faltered. “How long ago was it she…?”

“More than fourteen years.”

“Good God,” she said.

“Yes.”

32

They’d been sitting over breakfast when the letter came. “But surely we’re not just going to give up?” said Ginny.

“What else can we do?”

“Find another house.”

“We’ve looked at over a dozen already. This one was perfect. You know it was.”

“I thought you had more fight in you than that. For something which you really believed in.”

“Fight? It’s Sharma that I’d like to fight! Do you realize it’s for
months
he’s been stringing us along? First one evasion, then another. And all the time he was waiting to see if he could get a licence to…to bloody well compete with the casino at Brighton or at bloody Monte Carlo.” He again threw down the letter, in inexpressible disgust. “Oh,
hell
! The only thing this world cares about is money, money, money. ‘I’m all right, Jack. I couldn’t give a toss about what happens to the rest of you.’”

Yes, it had seemed the perfect house
and
at a rent that was viable. The others they’d explored had all been in North London but this one was to the south, at Lee Green. Most recently it had been a guest house: with roughly twenty good-sized rooms on three floors, quite pleasant furnishings, unfussy wallpapers: the whole place giving an impression of cleanliness, airiness and light. There had been two staircases, an excellent kitchen, washbasins in every bedroom, enough bathrooms and lavatories, central heating, oatmeal fitted carpet. There had also been a splendid garden with fruit trees, flowerbeds, plenty of lawn and a large vegetable plot. Miss Calthrop from the Old People’s Welfare Association had come to invesigate, spent a whole afternoon discussing possibilities, had declared herself delighted. Their bank manager, too, was sufficiently impressed—by them, their workings-out, the property itself—to promise them the figure they had mutually decided on. An officer of the fire brigade had stipulated fire doors and made several recommendations, not all obligatory, he’d stressed, but highly desirable. Although he’d spoken with the air of one who realized cost would inevitably outweigh good intentions he’d soon been told he was mistaken—Simon had a phobia regarding fires, nearly all his nightmares were inspired by it. Accordingly Mr Butcher had agreed to increase the loan and Simon had written a confirmational note to the fellow from the fire brigade.

And it was
not
, they said, going to be just another old people’s home, charging iniquitous prices and run with clinical efficiency, like so many they had gone to inspect on the pretext of having an aged relative to settle. This one was going to be a
home
; with lots of interesting and self-expressive things going on in it and plenty of younger people being roped in—for between them they had many friends—to entertain and stimulate and listen. Mrs Madison had offered to help with the housekeeping and the cooking, and an older sister of Ginny’s best friend, who even had several years’ nursing experience to contribute, was also going to move in. The ‘staff’ would all live on the top floor, leaving the two lower ones for those who found the stairs more difficult, and it was all going to be great fun, both for themselves and the residents. They wouldn’t even think of it as an old people’s home. More as a kind of commune.

And now—this.

“Well, we can’t pretend we didn’t see it coming,” said Ginny. “You kept asking why there should be such holdups with the contract.”

“I still can’t believe it.”

“Because you close your eyes to things.”

“Nonsense.”

“You expect everyone to be as straightforward as you. You feel all hurt and bewildered when they don’t do what they’ve said they will. You see something as being self-evidently good and can’t understand why anybody should ever choose to get in your way.”

“You know, I’m really not in the mood for character analysis. Or are you just getting something off your chest with your usual impeccable timing?”

“Like what, for instance?”

“Perhaps you’re trying to say I’m bossy? Demanding? Self-centred? Perhaps you’re trying to say I’m immature? Live in cloud-cuckoo-land? Which is it, then? Or does it happen to be the whole lot?”

“Perhaps I’m trying to say you’re taking it out on me, what Sharma’s done. Perhaps I’m trying to say it seems an easier alternative to do that than think positively about the future. Perhaps I’m trying to say you’ve got no trust, since it obviously hasn’t occurred to you that just maybe there’s a purpose to all of this and just maybe we’re not getting this house because there’s an even better one waiting for us someplace else.”

“Oh—
please
—don’t give me that shit!”

“I thought I was giving you hope. I thought I was giving you love. It must be you who turn things into shit.”

“You make me sick,” he said. “Thank you for your sympathy. It’s always nice to know you’ve got a sympathetic wife when times are hard.” Flushed, ashamed, disconsolate, he pushed back his chair.

“Where’re you going?”

“Out.”

“Good riddance! Thank God for a moment’s peace, a moment’s freedom from self-pity. Go out and have another breakdown!”

It was a Saturday, one of those in every three he got off. Ginny was no longer working; complications had developed to do with her pregnancy. If she didn’t rest at home, her doctor had warned, she would have to be taken into hospital. Normally, therefore, during the week she spent the whole morning in bed…unwillingly. But today they had been planning to go down to the house and if the weather was fine—as it was—to eat a picnic lunch in the garden.

At the door he stopped.

“Funnily enough, it isn’t just myself I’m thinking of. What about those dozen or so names Miss Calthrop had earmarked for us? What about my mother? What about Jenny? For Mother it was more or less a lifeline, this chance to start anew, have other people to work for, other people to live with and to care about.”

She answered: “I notice that you don’t spare much thought as to where I’m going to have my baby.”

Her elbow had been resting on the table. Now she put her head down on her forearm and began to sob.

He watched her for a moment in exasperation. Exasperation cooled to helplessness. He went to stand behind her and put his hand on her shoulder, wordlessly squeezing.

“No, go away!” she said.

“Ginny, I’m sorry. Of course I hadn’t forgotten about you and the baby.”

“Go away!”

“God knows why I act like this. Forgive me. He’s
my
baby as well, you know.”

“No, he isn’t.”

“What!”

At last she raised her head. “Sometimes I feel he’s just mine. Nobody else’s. I’m the one who really cares. You only pretend to.”

“That isn’t true. Darling, it’s not true.”

“Would you lay down your life for him?”

“Do you mean now or after he’s born?”

“Either.”

“I don’t know.”

“There you are, then.”

“There you are then, nothing! It would be so easy for me to say yes—of course it would—but to really mean it…”

“I’d say yes and there wouldn’t be the slightest question of my not meaning it.”

“All right, if so. Perhaps you love him more than I do. In any case I won’t deprive him of somewhere to be born. We’ll find another house.”

“What?” she said. “In ten weeks?”

“Yes.”

“Rush us in there just the day before, you mean? You may not realize this but a woman likes to get things ready in advance, have a moment or two to
gloat
before the start of her contractions. Not merely the nappies and the bootees and the jackets and the vests. She even likes to have a room to put them in, with clean curtains at the windows and a scrubbed and polished floor and pretty lining paper in the drawers. Me, when I come out of hospital, I’ll be lucky to have a Pickford’s removal van to bring my baby home to!”

He shook his head, frowningly.

“Pickford’s aren’t always the cheapest. We’ll need to get estimates.”

“I will not bring my baby back to
this
!”

Suddenly she caught his hand, which still rested on her shoulder.

“Oh, Simeon, there was just the sweetest little room for Joel in that damned house! Do you remember how we pictured the cot against one wall and a little chest of drawers with a vase of flowers on it, and for some reason it was practically the only room without carpet but the way the sunlight fell across the floor it made us think of richly stained wood, golden and glossy, and of warm-looking Scandinavian rugs? I’m sorry I was bitchy to you. I’m not unsympathetic, I’m truly not. We’ll be all right. But whatever happens we must find somewhere for the baby. We must. That’s the only thing that truly frightens me.”

He did his best to reassure her.

“I wonder if we could appeal in any way?” he asked, finally.

“This house at Lee Green? Haven’t we already wasted enough time over it?”

“I suppose we have.” He added vehemently: “You’re right, of course; there has to be some purpose. It couldn’t just be so…so
arbitrary
. You couldn’t face life feeling it’s got no point—the wicked prosper, the unfortunate suffer, and that it’s all for nothing, without hope of any rhyme or reason or redress. No balance to it whatsoever. Nothing beyond the present pleasure or the present pain, the odd humanitarian impulse, the meaningless ambition to improve, achieve, create. The urge to make your mark, to leave a memory. Life without point is just so…”

“Pointless?”

“Let’s take a walk.”

They strolled gently on the Heath, had coffee at the cafeteria in Kenwood House. But though the day was warm and springlike and everyone seemed happy and everything looked good—ducks on sparkling lakes, primroses and crocuses, a few early daffodils—they couldn’t wholeheartedly enjoy it, not even in their more frenetic moments. Finally they called on the two estate agents who’d been most helpful to them during the previous September. There was a house they could go to see that very afternoon. They got as far as the first landing and for the second time that day Ginny was suddenly crying.

They ate a Chinese meal out, saw a film at the Playhouse, made love when they got home, but the only thing that could effectively ease their disappointment for more than fifteen minutes at a time was sleep; and even then it happened to be one of those Saturday nights when their landlady downstairs got drunk and had a long series of battles with her black lover, younger than she was, and doors were slamming and murderous threats being screamed until sometime after two when Simon telephoned the police. Not out of any real fear for anybody’s safety but out of sheer, bloody-minded, suicidal vindictiveness.

33

On returning to his sermon Simon found it difficult to concentrate; eventually decided that he needed exercise. At first he intended to take a brisk walk to Flixborough, go down through the woods and into the warren, then along the track where pheasants flew up out of the trees and where the mauve-tinted hills against a bright skyline reminded him of the smoky blue landscapes in American westerns. Yet as soon as he reached the foot of his driveway he turned in the opposite direction, barely aware that he was heading for Tiffany’s. He might have thought it absurd if he didn’t always try to act upon his instincts. Absurd because, after all, the church would surely have been a better place to pray, as would the warren, the wood, the track between the copses. Why did he feel impelled towards the disco?

Indeed, when he got there he found that any of those other settings would have been preferable, almost beyond doubt. He hadn’t expected serenity, not precisely, but he certainly hadn’t expected to find men and machines so busily at work. Not merely had the place been cleared of debris, they were putting down a whole new surface: the smell of fresh tar lay sweetly on the air.

A short and heavily built man in a grey suit was standing to one side surveying the nearly finished work. He recognized Simon—although they’d never met—and walked cheerfully towards him.

“Afternoon, vicar! This is going to look pretty good, eh? We’ve been meaning to do it for years. Disgusting, the state it had got itself into!”

There were about twenty bystanders observing the activity. One of them was using his movie camera.