The Only Story Page 11

  * * *

  —

  It was, I suppose, ignorance and snobbery on my part which had hitherto made me assume that domestic violence was confined to the lower classes, where things were done differently, where—as I understood from my reading rather than from a close familiarity with backstreet life—women would rather their husbands hit them than be unfaithful to them. If he beats you, it shows he loves you, and all that crap. The idea of violence being inflicted by husbands with a Cambridge degree seemed to me incomprehensible. Of course, it was not a matter I’d had reason to think about before. But if I had, I would probably have guessed that violence among working-class husbands was connected to inarticulacy: they fell back on their fists whereas middle-class husbands fell back on words. Both these myths took some years to dispel, despite the present evidence.

  Susan’s dental plate caused her constant trouble; there were many drives up to town for adjustments. The dentist had also made the four new prosthetic teeth better aligned than the original ones, and shortened the central pair by a millimetre or two. A subtle change, but one always manifest to me. Those teeth I used to tap so lovingly were gone forever; and I had no desire to touch their replacements.

  One thing I never swerved from was the certainty that Gordon Macleod’s behaviour was a crime of absolute liability. And his responsibility was also absolute. A man hits a woman; a husband hits a wife; a drunkard hits a sober spouse. There was no defence, and no possible mitigation. The fact that it would never come to court, that middle-class England had a thousand ways of avoiding the truth, that respectability was no more shed in public than clothes, the fact that Susan would never accuse him to any authority, not even a dentist—all this had no relevance to me, except sociologically. The man was as guilty as hell, and I would hate him until the end of his days. This much I knew.

  It was about a year after this that I went to see Joan and announced our intention of moving up to London.

  * * *

  —

  You are an absolutist for love, and therefore an absolutist against marriage. You have given the matter much thought, and come up with many fanciful comparisons. Marriage is a dog kennel in which complacency lives and is never chained up. Marriage is a jewellery box which, by some mysterious opposite of alchemy, turns gold, silver and diamonds back into base metal, paste and quartz. Marriage is a disused boathouse containing an old, two-person canoe, no longer water-worthy, with holes in the bottom and one missing paddle. Marriage is…oh, you have dozens of such comparisons to hand.

  You remember your parents, and your parents’ friends. They were, on the whole, and without giving them too much credit, decent people: honest, hardworking, polite with one another, no more than averagely controlling of their children. Family life meant for them much what it had meant for their parents’ generation, though with just enough extra social freedom to let them imagine themselves pioneers. But where was love in all of this, you asked. And you didn’t even mean sex—because you preferred not to think about that.

  And so, when you had come into the Macleod household, and inspected a different way of living, you thought first about how circumscribed your own home seemed to be, how lacking in life and emotion. Then, gradually, you realised that the marriage of Gordon and Susan Macleod was, in fact, in far worse shape than any marriage among your parents’ circle, and you became all the more absolutist. That Susan should live with you in a state of love was obvious; that she should leave Macleod was equally obvious; that she should divorce him—especially after what he had done to her—seemed not just an acknowledgement of the truth of things, not just a romantic obligation, but a necessary first step towards her becoming an authentic person once more. No, not “once more”: really, it would be for the first time. And how exciting must that be for her?

  You persuade her to see a solicitor. No, she doesn’t want you to come with her. Part of you—the part that imagines a free, and freestanding, Susan in the near future—approves.

  “How did it go?”

  “He said that I was in a bit of a muddle.”

  “He said that?”

  “No. Not exactly. But I explained things to him. Most things. Not you, obviously. And, well, I suppose he thought I’d just bolted. Done a bunk. Maybe he thought it was all to do with the Dreaded.”

  “But…didn’t you explain what had happened…what he did to you?”

  “I didn’t go into detail, no. I kept it general.”

  “But you can’t get a divorce on general grounds. You can only get a divorce on particular grounds.”

  “Now don’t get shirty with me, Paul, I’m doing my best.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “He told me that, for a starting point, I should go away and write it all down. Because he could see I found it hard to tell him about it directly.”

  “That sounds very sensible.” Suddenly, you approve of this solicitor.

  “So that’s what I shall try to do.”

  When, a couple of weeks later, you ask how her statement is coming along, she shakes her head without reply.

  “But you’ve got to do it,” you say.

  “You don’t know how hard it is for me.”

  “Would you like me to help you?”

  “No, I have to do this by myself.”

  You approve. This will be the start, the making, of the new Susan. You try some gentle advice.

  “I think what they need are specifics.” You know a bit about divorce law by now. “Exactly what happened, and roughly when.”

  Another two weeks later, you ask how she’s doing.

  “Don’t give up on me just yet, Casey Paul” is her reply. And whenever she says this to you—and you never think it is calculated, because she is not a calculating person—it tears at your heart. Of course you won’t give up on her.

  And then, some weeks later, she gives you a few sheets of paper.

  “Don’t read it in front of me.”

  You take it away, and from the first sentence, your optimism disperses. She has turned her life, and her marriage, into a comic short story, which sounds to you like something by James Thurber. Perhaps it was. It is about a man in a three-piece suit, called Mr. Elephant Pants, who every evening goes to the pub—or the bar at Grand Central Station—and comes home in a state which alarms his wife and children. He knocks over the hatstand, kicks the flowerpots, shouts at the dog, so that there is a spreading of Great Alarm and Despondency, and he rackets away until he falls asleep on the sofa and snores so loudly that tiles fall off the roof.

  You don’t know what to say. You say nothing. You pretend you are still considering this document. You know you have to be very gentle and very patient with her. You explain again about them needing to know specifics, the where and the when and, most importantly, the what. She looks at you and nods.

  Slowly, over the next weeks and months, you begin to understand that it is not going to happen, not ever. She is strong enough to love you, strong enough to run off with you, but not strong enough to enter a court of law and give evidence against her husband about the decades of sexless tyranny, alcoholism and physical attack. She will not be able—even via her solicitor—to ask the dentist to describe her injuries. She cannot attest in public to what she is able to admit in private.

  You realise that, even if she is the free spirit you imagined her to be, she is also a damaged free spirit. You understand that there is a question of shame at the bottom of it. Personal shame; and social shame. She may not mind being thrown out of the tennis club for being a Scarlet Woman, but she cannot admit to the true nature of her marriage. You remember old cases in which criminals—even murderers—would marry their female accomplices because a wife could not be compelled to give evidence against a husband. But nowadays, far away from the world of criminality, in the respectable Village and many, many similar, silent places across the land, there
are wives who have been conditioned, by social and marital convention, not to give evidence against their husbands.

  And there is another factor, of which, strangely, you have not thought. One calm evening—calm because you have officially given up on the project, and all false hope and annoyance have drained from you—she says to you quietly,

  “And anyway, if I did do it, he’d bring up the matter of you.”

  You are astounded. You feel you had nothing to do with the breakup of the Macleod marriage; you were just the outsider who pointed out what would have been obvious to anyone. Yes, you fell in love with her; yes, you ran away with her; but that was consequence, not cause.

  Even so, perhaps you are lucky that the old law of enticement is no longer on the statute book. You imagine being called as a witness and asked to explain yourself. Part of you thinks this would be wonderful, heroic; you play through the courtroom exchange, in which you are dazzling. Until the final question. Oh, and by the way, young enticer, young seducer, may I ask what you do by way of a job? Of course, you reply, I am studying to be a solicitor. You realise that you might just have to change profession.

  * * *

  —

  You know that sometimes, after checking on the house she owns half of, she goes to visit Joan. This is a good idea, even if on her return her hair smells of cigarette smoke. Once, you catch sherry on her breath.

  “Did you have a drink with Joan?”

  “Did I? Let me think…Quite possibly.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t. Drink and drive. It’s crazy.”

  “Yes, sir,” she agrees satirically.

  Another time, she has smoke in her hair and Polos on her breath. You think, This is silly.

  “Look, if you’re going to have a drink with Joan, don’t insult my intelligence by chewing a few Polos afterwards.”

  “The thing is, Paul, there are parts of the drive I don’t like. They give me the jitters. Blind corners. I find that a little nip of sherry with Joan calms my nerves. And the Polos aren’t for you, darling, they’re in case I get stopped by a policeman.”

  “I’m sure policemen are just as suspicious of drivers smelling of Polos as when they smell of alcohol.”

  “Don’t you turn into a policeman, Paul. Or a lawyer, even if you are going to be one. I’m doing my best. That’s all I can do.”

  “Of course.”

  You kiss her. You have no more taste for confrontation than she does. Of course you trust her, of course you love her, of course you are far too young to be a policeman or a lawyer.

  And so you both laugh your way through several uncomplicated months.

  But one February afternoon, she is late back from the Village. You know she doesn’t like driving in the dark. You imagine the car off the road, in a ditch, her bloodied head against the dashboard, Polos spilling from her handbag.

  You ring Joan.

  “I’m a bit worried about Susan.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, what time did she leave you?”

  “When?”

  “Today.”

  “I haven’t seen Susan today.” Joan’s voice is steady. “I wasn’t expecting her either.”

  “Oh fuck,” you say.

  “Let me know when she’s back safely.”

  “Sure,” you say, your mind only half there.

  “And Paul.”

  “Yes?”

  “If she comes back safely, that’s the main thing.”

  “Yes.”

  It is the main thing. And she does come back safely. And her hair is clean, and there is nothing on her breath.

  “Sorry I’m late, darling,” she says, putting down her handbag.

  “Yes, I was worrying.”

  “No need to worry.”

  “Well I do.”

  You leave it at that. After supper, you pick up the plates, and, making sure your back is to her, ask,

  “How’s old Joan?”

  “Joan? Same as ever. Joan doesn’t change. That’s what’s nice about her.”

  You rinse off the plates and leave it at that. You are a lover, not a lawyer, you remind yourself. Except that you are going to become a lawyer, because you need to be solid and stable, the better to look after her.

  * * *

  —

  The log of memory splits down the grain. So you can’t remember the quiet times, the outings, the jollity, the running jokes, even the legal studies, which fill the gap between that last exchange and the day when, worried by a succession of late returns from the Village, you say to her, quietly and unchallengingly,

  “I know you don’t always go and see Joan when you say you do.”

  She looks away.

  “Have you been checking up on me, Casey Paul? It’s a terrible unloving thing to do, check up on people.”

  “Yes, but I can’t stop worrying, and I can’t bear to think of you alone in the house with…him.”

  “Oh, I’m quite safe,” she says. There is a silence for a while. “Look, Paul, I don’t tell you about it because I don’t want the two parts of my life overlapping. I want to build a wall around us here.”

  “But?”

  “But there are practical matters to discuss with him.”

  “Like divorce?”

  Immediately, you feel ashamed of your sarcasm.

  “Don’t badger me like that, Mr. Badger. I’ve got to do things in my own time. It’s all more complicated than you think.”

  “OK.”

  “We—he and I—have two children together, don’t forget that.”

  “I don’t.” Though of course, you do. Often.

  “There’s money to discuss. The car. The house. I think the place needs repainting this summer.”

  “You discuss painting the house?”

  “That’s enough from you, Mr. Badger.”

  “OK,” you say. “But you love me and you don’t love him.”

  “You know that’s how it is, Casey Paul. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”

  “And I suppose he would like you to return.”

  “What I hate,” she says, “is when he gets down on his knees.”

  “He gets down on his knees?” In his elephant pants, I think.

  “Yes, it’s awful, it’s embarrassing, it’s undignified.”

  “And, what, begs you to stay with him?”

  “Yes. You see why I don’t tell you about it?”

  * * *

  —

  The Fancy Boys used to turn up at Henry Road and sleep on the floor, dossing like dogs on piles of cushions. The more of them there were, the more busily relaxed Susan became. So this was all good. Sometimes they brought their girlfriends, whose reactions to Henry Road used to intrigue me. I became expert in sensing covert disapproval. I wasn’t being defensive or paranoid, merely observant. Also, I was amused by the orthodoxy of their sexual outlook. You might have thought—mightn’t you?—that a girl or young woman in her early twenties would be rather encouraged by the notion that something exciting might happen to her nearly three decades on: that her heart and body would still be excitable, and that her future didn’t necessarily have to be a matter of rising social acceptance combined with slow emotional diminution. I was surprised that some of them didn’t find my relationship with Susan a cause for cheer. Instead, they reacted much as their parents would have done: alarmed, threatened, moralistic. Perhaps they were looking forward to being mothers themselves, and imagining their precious sons being cradle-snatched. Anyone would have thought Susan was a witch who had entranced me, fit only for the ducking stool. Well, she had entranced me. And to feel the disapproval from women of my own age merely increased my pleasure at Susan’s and my originality, and my own determination to continue offending the prim and the unimaginative. Well, we all have to have a pur
pose in life, don’t we? Just as a young man needs a reputation.

  Around this time, one of the lodgers moved out, and Eric, having broken up with his (moralistic, marriage-demanding) girlfriend, took over the free room on the top floor. This brought a new dynamic to the house, perhaps even a better one. Eric thoroughly approved of our relationship, and would be able to keep an eye on Susan when I couldn’t. He was allowed to pay rent, which made it seem the more illogical that Susan wouldn’t take any from me. But I knew how she would react if I renewed my offer.

  A few months passed. One evening, after Susan had gone to bed, Eric said,

  “Don’t like to mention this…”

  “Yes?”

  He looked embarrassed, which was unlike Eric.

  “…but the thing is, Susan’s been nicking my whisky.”

  “Your whisky? She doesn’t even drink whisky.”

  “Well, it’s her, or you, or the poltergeist.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I put a mark on the bottle.”

  “How long’s this been going on?”

  “A few weeks. Maybe months?”

  “Months? Why didn’t you tell me?”