The Marriage Bed (10 page)

“No, that I can’t do,” I said.

“What on earth do you mean, can’t?” Billie’s voice had a sharp edge of exasperation. By her lights she was being admirably rational, even morally right, and she looked at me for the first time that evening with real indignation.

“I mean that’s the one thing I know I’m not going to do. It’s the one thing I’m absolutely sure of.”

“Well, I think you must be completely out of your mind, then.”

“Please, nobody pressure her,” Ross put in. “She has a right to go through with this if she feels that way about it. And I’m going
to do whatever I can to help her, even if that isn’t a hell of a lot.”

“I will always love this man,” I thought. “Always. Whatever happens.”

“But Anne, you can’t mean you’d actually saddle yourself for the next twenty years with a –”

“Billie,” Max said gently. “Shut up, sweetie.”

“Look, women have been known to survive these problems,” I said, trying to sound sure of it. “I can work, at least until – and get most of my master’s credits as well. But the thing that matters to me right now is not to back Ross into any corner whatsoever. There’s going to be no garbage about getting married. I’ve made that perfectly clear to him.”

“Well, at least you got
some
sense,” remarked Max grudgingly. He looked at the drink in his hand as if wondering how it got there, and then took a gulp of it.

“Of course it’s the only way. This is the worst possible reason to rush out and get married; we know that. Completely unfair on all three of us. So we’ve decided to keep on just as we are, hold on to Ross’s apartment till next winter.… Of course afterwards it’ll be too small, but – anyhow, we’re going to save all we can until – and after that, we’ll just see how things work out.”

While I made these not very coherent remarks, Ross stared intently at the carpet. He looked profoundly depressed. But Max threw one leg over the other and set down his glass with an almost cheerful air.

“So. Well, I’m glad you got enough sense not to go making it legal, setting up a divorce for later and all that mess.”

“That’s what we think. It wouldn’t make sense.” Ross’s head hung low and his voice was almost inaudible.

“That’s right. Well, the two of you have your heads on straight about that much, at least. Now you’d better have a drink, Ross. Give the kid a Scotch, Billie, he looks like he could use it.”

He was almost friendly to Ross from then on, but it was months before Billie and I were able to get back on our old comradely footing. Both these reactions surprised me at the time, and in a way they still do.

U
pstairs the phone trilled, recalling me sharply to the here and now. “Answer it, Martha!” I called up the stairs, and waited till I heard her scampering feet.

“Anne Graham here,” said her gruff voice, and with a basket of diapers cumbersomely in hand, I toiled up the stairs as quickly as I could. Last week, before I could intervene, she had said, “No, I’m too sodding busy now,” and hung up on some unknown caller. I took the receiver from her, proffering a cheese cracker in trade.

“Sweetie? Are you there, Anne?” It was Billie’s lilting, little-girl voice. Before sinking into a chair to ease my back, I glanced around swiftly to make sure the box Hugh was playing with no longer contained steel wool. Martha climbed into the diaper basket to set up housekeeping with her cracker and a bunch of keys filched from my purse.

“Hi, Billie,” I said loudly. She was getting just a little deaf, though she would never admit it.

“Only me, sweetie,” she trilled. “How goes the battle?”

“Oh, everything’s okay. I mean, there’s nothing new.” Of course, Billie had known from the start all about my separation from Ross. Such things never seemed to her to call for negative moral or ethical judgement of anyone concerned. So many lapses were far more damning in her eyes – wearing Crimplene dresses, for instance, or saying “anyways.” Yes, she was a supremely silly woman, my mother, and I loved her a lot.

“Look, ducky, I want to see you. Got some rather nice news.
Grab a sitter and meet me downtown somewhere nice for lunch.”

“Oh, Bill, I’m afraid it can’t be done. Margaret’s in Boston with her girls, and there’s nobody else I really trust.”

“But surely that other neighbour of yours – Joanie, or whatever her name is –”

“Billie, they could
die
and she wouldn’t even notice it if
The Edge of Night
happened to be on.”

“Oh, ducky, don’t be such a drag.”

“I could bring them with me, but you wouldn’t like that, I’m sure.”

“Out of the question, sweetie. Martha got mashed potato in my diamond
earring
last time.”

“Yes, I remember. Well, then, if you want to see us, you’ll just have to come here. Why not do that?”

She sighed. “It’s just that I frankly find little kids so horrible, even when they’re yours. That funny smell they have, you know, like damp biscuits, all of them. And their voices go right straight through your head like a drill.”

I sighed, too, and with an effort made no comment. Billie had never allowed me to call her Mummy or even Mother – not so much because it dated her as because the relationship seemed to her irrelevant. As for being a grandmother, the very thought of it was in her view a feeble joke. She regarded Hugh and Martha (when she couldn’t avoid directly confronting them) with amusement, even a sort of remote affection; but their company bored her to desperation. Oddly enough, I resented this far less than Edwina’s dutiful parade of concern and attention. Which just shows how unjust one’s deepest feelings can be.

“Max sent me a note this morning,” I said, in an effort to smooth her feathers. “Want to hear? He says, ‘Annie dear, I sat up late last night going through a poetry book you left behind. A little
culture and I haven’t enjoyed my cigar since. How come these poets are so depressed all the time, even about sex? Here’s this guy Auden and all he can say is

I understand the guy was a fag, but that’s no excuse.’ How is my dear Max?”

“Oh, he’s fine,” she said carelessly.

“Look, Billie, I’d really love to see you –” and as I said this, the need to see her came over me with the physical urgency of a stitch in the side. It wasn’t enough to hear her tinkling voice – I wanted to see that little beaky nose with its twitch of amusement, that expensively tinted and coiffed hair, the pink small hands all atwinkle with Max’s diamonds.

“Do come here,” I begged. “It’s your birthday tomorrow, isn’t it? I’ve bought you something pretty at the Craft Shop. I really want to see you.”

“No more official birthdays. Too sordid, sweetie,” the little voice squeaked. “Change the subject.”

“No, drop in just for an hour or so this afternoon. Ross often comes by around five to take the kids for a walk.” (Well, he used to. But there are times when a lie is justifiable. Even essential.)

“Oh well, all right then. If he doesn’t come, you can just tie them to their beds or something. About the Happy Hour, then, doll. See you then.” And she rang off before I could get out of her what her good news was.

Idly, as I folded laundry, I speculated what it might be. Probably only that Max was going to Korea or somewhere on one
of his business trips. She loved it when he was away. Then she needn’t plan and eat sensibly balanced meals but could nibble bits and pieces at all hours as she chose. Instead of doing her exercises, she could spend all morning in bed with a thriller if she liked, or sit in front of
TV
all evening sipping stingers from the pitcher she kept on call in the freezer and visited only discreetly when he was home. Not that Max ever said a word about her large daily intake of alcohol, either because she never showed the slightest effect from it, or because he was much too wise. All the same, she drank considerably less when he was around. I sometimes suspected also (though this was pure speculation) that Billie, fond as she was of Max, preferred sleeping in their king-size bed alone. Of course, she adored all the stages of courtship – she had always been a superb flirt in the teasing manner of the forties. She even used to try a bit of the old fluttering allure from time to time on Ross, just to keep in practice. But basically I thought she could never much have liked the final act itself. She had too keen a sense of the ridiculous, and too little love of sports.

As I lumbered upstairs with clean linen for the beds, the kids scrambled up after me, followed by Violet and the cat, in a ragged little procession. None of them liked being left alone downstairs.

It was a pity, in a way, I thought, stepping over the dog to strip Hugh’s cot, that I’d never been able to model myself on Billie as some girls do on their mothers. Because in her feather-weight way she probably had some of her values a lot straighter than I did. In my place, for instance, she would have regarded going to bed with Ross for the first time as simply a lark, a fun thing, not for a moment to be taken seriously. Whereas I for days and days hesitated, agonized over the decision, and postponed it, until both of us were in the last stages of emotional hypertension. I’d begun to take the pill, but for some inexplicable reason couldn’t bring myself to take the plunge.

Finally I said in desperation, “Look, this is crazy. Let me get up. I’ve got to get out of here. I’ll fail my exams. We’ll just have to keep away from each other, at least till they’re over.”

“It would be perfectly simple if we just went properly to bed,” said Ross. “It’s all this messing around that’s bad for your nerves. Not to mention mine.”

“No, no, I haven’t got time. I’ve got to get that medal.”

He rolled away from me abruptly and sat up. “Right. You’re perfectly right. This is crazy. You go off and hit the books.”

While he fished under the bed for his shoes, I buttoned my blouse, shivering though his tiny bedroom was at least eighty degrees in an unseasonable heat wave. At the spotty mirror over his chest of drawers, I rebraided my tangled hair. Whistling under his breath, he pulled a clean T-shirt over his head.

“Guess I’ll go over to the club and see if I can pick up a game of squash.”

“Right.”

“See you, maybe, after the exams.”

“Sure.”

“Take care.”

“Right.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks. So long.”

With extreme dignity I preceded him downstairs and out into the blaze of sunlight. At the corner we parted silently. Halfway between the student ghetto and the library I met Karen, who had not spoken to me for several weeks. I smiled. She ignored me. “Silly bitch,” I thought, “you’re way behind the times.”

I crossed the road, entered the chill stuffiness of the library, sat down in my carrel, took out my books, and began to cry. Fifteen minutes later I was climbing the long walk-up to his apartment, only to find him just steps behind me.

“Thought you might be here,” I said, as he pulled me in and locked the door.

“I thought you might be, too.”

“It’s too hot for studying anyway.”

“Or for squash.”

“Oh. Oh. Do that again.”

We sank onto the bed and all clocks stopped. It became evident after a time that, for all his apparent sophistication, Ross had little more expertise than I. This in no way impeded our mutual pleasure, only prolonged it deliciously. But was it ignorance, or simply innocence, that made us unable to separate emotion from those acute bodily pleasures? Most of my friends and his had no trouble keeping the two apart – Billie had always been able to – but we didn’t know how. Freaks that we were, we lay in each other’s arms afterwards and mingled tears. For us it really had been nothing less than an act of love; a final and permanent commitment.

Or so it seemed at the time. In retrospect, though, I had to admit it was inexcusable to be less with it than my own mother. Because what could be more ridiculous, after all that, than to find yourself three years later all alone, perpetually doing laundry, shedding tears into children’s socks, and making up this rotten, vacated double bed? Irritably I plucked Mao out from under the sheet, where he was catching an imaginary rat. And while we were asking silly questions, why did I need to see my mother so badly now, all of a sudden, when all our lives till recently I’d considered Billie the child and myself the adult? Oh well, what was the point of brooding over such things now. In a few hours she would be here, and that gave me something to look forward to.

“Come on, you lot,” I said to the assembled kids and animals. “Let’s start getting ready for the Happy Hour.” Putting it this way made the snowsuit routine easier to face, likewise its grim sequel – shopping for gin at the Liquor Board outlet half a mile away. This
meant wrestling the pram out of the front porch, always a test of muscle and character. However, the thought of a ride in their beloved pram spurred the kids into active co-operation, and, getting into the spirit of the thing, Mao shot up the curtains like a flying cat and made us all laugh.

A
few torn scraps of bright blue sky fluttered like flags overhead. The high-sprung pram lurched over the icy pavement in a slow progress that had a sedative effect on me as well as on the children. As we bumbled along I planned the day with some kind of confidence that I could control at least minor events. A macaroni-cheese casserole could be prepared in advance for supper, so I needn’t be in and out of the kitchen while Billie’s visit lasted. The
TV
could be pushed into the dining-room to occupy the kids there. Violet would have to be shut into a bedroom – Billie was afraid of dogs, even craven, dim-witted dogs like ours. And I’d buy mushrooms and make some of those nice little hot canapés she liked to nibble with her drinks. And somehow or other, at some point, I would have to scrounge time to brush my hair and change out of this grotty old smock, or she would say in her tinkly voice, “Sweetie, you mustn’t get
drab.
” Yes, this visit, like yesterday’s with Edwina, would have its strains; but at least I wouldn’t be bored. Billie might be trivial, but, after all, so is most good entertainment.