The Needle's Eye (13 page)

And then she had tried to get away from him, to comfort the child, knowing he was right, and she had trodden on the broken ketchup bottle, blind as she was with tears and rage and moral confusion, and she had cut her foot, a curious cut between the toes, God knows how it had happened but it bled like nothing on earth, and what with the blood and the ketchup and the damp chips trodden into the carpet she had wished to die, but had gone up instead to comfort the child, and having reached the child Christopher had shouted something at her – oddly enough she could not remember what it was, that had thus proved the last straw, but he could always do it, he could always manage it, with unfailing monotonous regularity, with pre-ordained finality, and this time she had been quite overcome with an upsurge of such violence that she had flung the smaller of the two children down the stairs at him, and he had caught the child but only just, and it too was covered in ketchup and looked as though bleeding, and she had managed, in the end, to comfort the other one, and had retired to bed with it, trembling with shame and self-contempt and a profound, unceasing misery, because she knew – at each of these moments she knew, and forgot now less often in between them – that all was up with herself and Christopher, whom she had so wanted, for whom she had endured so much, and that they had reached a point beyond any hope of repair, they had reached such depths now that the walls behind them – to that flat plateau of mutual co-existence, of occasionally sunny tolerance – were no longer scalable, they were down for ever now, and unless they parted – dirty, dishevelled, undesirable – they would kill each other, perhaps even literally.

It was so difficult, looking back, to remember how things had ever reached such an extremity. It had happened gradually, at first – the hard word, the suspicions, the intolerance, the endless distrust on both sides, the foul temper about ruined meals (on his part) or no outings to the cinema (on hers), and suddenly there had seemed no point in ever watching one’s temper, in ever trying to control one’s foul resentments. But it had been the first blow that had done it. She did rather tend to agree with the courts about physical violence. It was a serious matter, a more than technical offence. If he had hit her
when she had still, passionately, loved him, she would not have minded it, she would have enjoyed it, even, but of course he had not done so, on the contrary, when she had loved him he had loved her and he had been, accordingly, good to her. And she could not help thinking (though she could not be sure) that it was she herself that had struck the first blow. He had struck her only in self-defence, but he had done this more and more frequently, having more to defend himself from, having committed more offences, and therefore having induced more attacks: and his defence had become violent out of all proportion to the odd kick or slap or bite or broken glass which she had inflicted on him, until she was always the loser. There was no going back, for her, after such a pattern had been established. Yet how could they live together, with such knowledge, in such a mire, and being in the mire, why should they ever restrain themselves from kicking, biting, and breaking plates and windows? There was nothing to be salvaged, nothing at all. So she had agreed with her barrister at the divorce, she had politely produced her evidence of wounds: ‘this is a mere technicality, you know, but it is one of the most convenient matrimonial offences’ he had said, smiling urbanely, and she had smiled and thought Christ, what is he talking about, convenient, does he think I liked being beaten black and blue, does he think I liked bleeding, and having my hair pulled out (in such large patches that it was confused with another nervous disease she developed at around the same period, the disease of alopecia)? Christ, she had said to herself, he must meet some sophisticated couples, if they can bear all this without resentment, and recall it merely as a convenience and a technicality. Similarly, the judge’s attitudes had confused her: her own judge’s, but even more the judge of a completely disconnected case that she had gone to watch in order to brace herself for her own forthcoming ordeal. Curiously enough, that too had been a mixed marriage, a defended divorce, between a Turkish-, not a Greek-Cypriot and an English girl: Rose had sat there, suffering from the very look of the room, feeling grotesquely conspicuous in the Public Gallery, and God knows what it would be like in the witness box, and she had heard this story of grief and woe and violence, not dissimilar, in several respects, from her own,
though the sums of money involved in their joint deposit account book had been smaller: the Turk had been a good witness and had won his case, which depressed her enormously, as she had felt obliged (through the loyalty of sex) to identify with the feckless wife, who had deserted husband and children because she wanted (her own words) a bit more fun out of life. And her chief complaint against the husband had been his violence: he made, it appeared, a regular habit of flinging things at her, slapping her, punching her and so on. If he had done these things, Rose thought, the woman might indeed legitimately have objected, but the judge did not think so: he spoke of things that any man might do under provocation, and seemed to think that a few blows one way or the other were the normal fare of married life. Indeed, he had said, of the abusive words of which the lady complained, that she must not be shy to repeat them in his presence, that he had heard anything she might be likely to say and worse, and that surely such words (extremely familiar, it had to be admitted, to Rose’s ears and lips) were common enough in the give and take of daily matrimonial intercourse, and could hardly be taken as grounds for divorce for cruelty. He also said that it was funny that the lady in question hadn’t had a few more bruises to show: and hearing this Rose had looked down on the battle scar upon her wrist with a loving gratitude. And the judge had found for the husband, describing him not as cruel but as deserted. This may well, Rose thought, have been so, but she remained perplexed by the nonchalance with which abuse and blows had been disregarded by this elderly man, the kind of man, she imagined, who would consider it an act of violence, in his own domestic situation, if a guest were to put down a glass on a polished wooden surface, or drop ash upon a parquet floor.

The Turk had said, from time to time, that he loved his wife. In much the same way as Christopher, not much later, was to declare in court that he loved Rose. Love. The word fell uneasily on the official air. But nobody queried it. And she had a strange sense, as she sat there, both times, as spectator and as plaintiff, of love as some huge white deformed and not very lovely god, lying there beneath the questions and the formality, caught in a net of which points alone
touched and confined him – points, blows, matrimonial offences, desertions, legalities, all binding love down though he shapelessly overflowed and struggled – and necessarily bound, the net being entirely necessary, because without it there was violence and terror and warfare. She had invoked the law, she had invoked it herself, in her own defence, in the defence of her children, in much the way that it had been invoked against her in her minority, and then as now she would abide by its decisions.

But what would happen to her, this time, over the custody? There were some decisions she could never accept, though the loss of her children, the threatened one, was the only one she could imagine. This time too there must be technicalities – education, religion, drink, responsibility, she dimly guessed what the issues would be – and this time might she not find herself there mumbling shamefully of love, while Christopher and his lawyers called upon the voice of reason and tightened the net over her struggling passions? It was not possible, she refused to think it possible. Simon Camish had said that they very rarely took the child from the mother, unless the mother were grossly defective. But she knew wherein her gross defects lay. She knew it already. And those defects being her virtues, her faith, her way of life, she could not even, without losing all, offer even a promise of reform.

Simon Camish, driving back from Southampton, having lost his case, had a headache. He was on his way to Rose Vassiliou’s, and did not want to go there. He wanted, however, to go home even less. And in any case, duty bound him. He was incapable of breaking an arrangement. But, he thought to himself, there is really little good that I can do, the whole business is not at all serious, clearly this woman’s husband is a trouble-maker, whereas she is (as I have seen her) quiet, domestic, a conscientious mother, and there is no conceivable reason why there should be any difficulty over the children. She wants reassurance, that is all, and really I see no reason why I should be obliged to offer unpaid reassurance to any woman I happen to meet. She has a nerve to request it, and I am a fool to offer it.

This is what he was telling himself, which was much the same as what she, waiting for him, was telling herself. But both were uneasy, she because she knew better, and he because he had taken the trouble to send for some newspaper files on her (God knows why curiosity should have led him so far) and he had found there things that did not make sense, that one could not possibly like. He could not face, he had not the energy for the encounter, so he repressed the uneasiness of his investigations, promising himself that he would deal with the whole matter as superficially and sensibly as possible, and then get out of it quick before anything uncomfortable presented itself. It was a familiar professional mode, and quite often it was all that was required. He hoped that it would be so in this case.

But unfortunately, when he arrived there, the scene that he found was not exactly susceptible to such an approach. The children, for one thing, were still up. Having calculated that the one real advantage of visiting her first would be that he would miss his own, he was rather put out to hear, as the door was opened to him, the noise of hers.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, standing there in her apron in the narrow passage, ‘I’m afraid I haven’t managed to get them to bed yet, but they’ll be going soon. Do come in.’

‘That’s quite all right,’ he said, bravely, putting down his umbrella and his briefcase, and following her into the living-room, which seemed remarkably, uncomfortably full of people. A pregnant young woman, of a sullen and sultry aspect, was sitting on the settee in a kind of trance, for she did not look round when he entered, and at her feet two smallish children (mercifully, he noted, wearing pyjamas and nightdress) were rolling around fighting. The television was on, but competing with it was a large child, who was playing the oboe.

‘Come along now, little ones, off to bed,’ said Rose, as though expecting no response, and indeed getting none, for the children continued to fight, but the eldest child put down his oboe and offered his hand to be shaken, when introduced. ‘This is Konstantin,’ said Rose, and he looked at the child’s face, and felt his determination waver, and also his resentment. Because, after all, anyone would
worry about losing a real child: worry was an entirely natural response, and reassurance an entirely natural desire, however trivial the grounds for anxiety – and seeing the object of anxiety, the grounds no longer seemed trivial, the whole matter became serious, even as a suggestion. The child was quite striking. He had long fair hair and a face of the most delicate frail politeness.

‘You play the oboe, I see,’ said Simon, fatuously, as Rose behind his back removed the two little ones, and the pregnant girl dislodged herself and disappeared without a word.

‘Yes,’ said Konstantin.

‘How long have you been learning for?’ he asked, unable to think of anything else to say.

‘Not very long.’

‘Do they teach you at school?’

‘There’s a man who comes round. A peripatetic teacher, he’s called.’

‘Oh, is he?’

‘He teaches three of us. We do it together.’

‘You could play me a tune,’ said Simon, sitting down. His head was splitting. The child played him a tune. When the tune was over Rose came down again and told him to go and have his bath, which he did, without a murmur of protest.

‘He’s a very polite child,’ said Simon, to Rose, carefully.

‘Yes, he is,’ said Rose.

‘And very – striking.’

‘It’s his hair,’ said Rose. ‘Mine used to be like that, at his age. Funny that he’s inherited it.’ She looked worn out.

‘You look worn out,’ he said.

And she looked at him, sharply, and said, ‘So do you,’ and they both laughed.

After that she offered him a meal, and he offered to take her out for a meal, and she said that she had nobody to babysit, so she cooked for him, instead – a nice meal, though he did not much notice what he was eating – and while they were doing this they talked. There were various questions he wanted to ask, and so he asked them, because it seemed the best thing to do. He asked her about her
marriage, her parents, her exile to the Continent, her divorce: but first of all he asked the first thing, the reason for which was the act that seemed to have set the whole thing in motion. He, like her, had come to accept that it must have been some notion of revenge that had led Christopher to think of applying for the wardship or custody of the children – a notion reinforced by the sight of the collage letter which Christopher had sent Rose the morning after Simon had first met her, which contained a cut-out headline from a popular daily, saying
WARDS-OF-COURT: ANYONE COULD MAKE ANYONE A WARD-OF-COURT
followed by a picture of a girl who had been made one, as a joke, by a total stranger who had seen her dancing in a nightclub. So he said to Rose, now, still sitting at the table with the letter on her sideplate – ‘What was it, why ever did your parents do such a thing to you? You wouldn’t really have married without their consent, would you?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Rose. ‘I might have done. I really had provoked them rather a lot, you know. Perhaps I wanted to provoke them into doing something awful, do you think? I’ve often wondered. They’re a funny couple, you know, they brought me up very oddly, I don’t know what they can have expected. My father’s father had a garage, perhaps you know all this, and my father made all this money, and married my mother when they were both quite old, well, in their mid-thirties, and she must have been talked into it by her family, I think. Because now they keep the house up. Not that she’s there very much, she goes abroad for most of the winter. She doesn’t really do anything, she hasn’t got any friends or anything. She’s got a companion, now. She’s a very sad person. Bored all the time. My father’s quite different, he works all the time, he never stops, I can’t see what there is in it for him now but he just can’t stop. So neither of them had much time for me – I bored her, and he wouldn’t talk to me because all he could talk about was business and I didn’t understand about it … I suppose I was a disappointment to them, but on the other hand it’s hard to imagine what they could actually have
wanted
me to be, they never tried to make me take an interest in anything, they didn’t try to encourage me to go out or do anything.