‘With whose money?’ She was aggressive. I said she knew perfectly well with whose money. A bit of our own and a great deal of her father’s. Surely it was tacitly understood that when we were ready, he’d help us to buy. She said buying our flat wouldn’t solve anything. The flat was awful, but it wasn’t that that was getting her down. I said I didn’t know what else to suggest, it seemed to be me making all the suggestions and then her promptly telling me I was stupid every time I opened my mouth. I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t be happy.
‘Don’t suggest anything,’ she said. ‘And above all, stop buying me flowers as if I were dying or something.’
Carrying the Gloomy Can
My mother came over. I think for my birthday. Mother is a great celebrator of birthdays, even when everybody else has forgotten them. She even remembers Hilary’s. It’s a ritual for her, a slavery almost, like the moral code she blindly follows, the tithe of her income in the collection plate, the sense of duty toward Grandfather, the not marrying a man because he’d got divorced a decade before.
She remembered my birthday and brought the traditional, home-baked, lemon-iced birthday cake, arriving at the door after two long bus rides all bright and chirrupy, because of course Mother is never more cheerful than when she knows she’s fulfilling some family duty. I thanked her and kissed her. I was even glad she’d come as I felt it might take some of the tension out of the air. But hardly have we sat down to eat our cake than Shirley is asking: ‘Saved any souls lately, Mrs Crawley?’
It was deliberately hurtful. She had the innocent smile on her face she always combines with her worst sarcasm. My Mother very simply said: ‘It’s not me saves souls, lovey, it’s God,’ and she began to tell us all about Peggy’s darling little boy Frederick. He was so big and blond, he had all his milk teeth already, he was such a gorgeous cuddly little boy. Her big clumsy hands massacred the cake with the flat’s blunt breadknife. ‘For you, George?’
Shirley asked: ‘‘I imagine Peg’s planning another one now?’
Naturally, given the still dubious paternity of the first, this had Mother knitting her brow. But she managed a forgiving laugh: ‘Oh, I wouldn’t know, Peggy never tells me anything.’
‘Vetting possible fathers, perhaps,’ Shirley suggested. ‘She’s into Buddhism these days, isn’t she? Perhaps we’ll have a Chinese in the family.’
When we were on our own a moment in the kitchen I asked her what the hell she thought she was up to. Why couldn’t we just have a pleasant meal together?
‘I hate,’ she said, ‘the way you’re such a goody goody when your mother comes, the way she thinks the sun shines out of your backside. If she knew what you were really like.’
‘And what am I like?’ I asked.
‘You hardly need me to tell you that,’ she said.
‘You were the one, sweetheart,’ I told her, ‘said you wouldn’t mind her coming to live here with us.’
‘Precisely because,’ she replied, ‘she might finally be forced to see the light. We might clear the air.’
‘I swear in front of her,’ I said, ‘I don’t try to hide anything.’
At which, and I’m afraid this is very effective, she simply burst out laughing and walked back into the living room.
Driving Mother home to Acton, I said: ‘Sorry if Shirl was a bit abrasive, Mum.’
‘Was she, love? I didn’t notice.’
‘I don’t know, she seems a bit, er, frustrated these days. I don’t know what it is.’
‘We all go through our bad patches, poor dear,’ Mother said complacently. Then waiting for the lights at the A40, she hazarded: ‘I know it’s none of my business, but perhaps it’s time to start a family. She did tell me she’d like a baby a while back.’
When I said nothing, watching for green — I had the usual hassler trying to edge past me on the inside, something I never allow — she said: ‘I always feel there’s a time in everybody’s lives when it’s just the next logical step to take, the only way to grow.’
I laughed, putting my foot down hard. I love driving. I said, ‘You forget, Mum. I specialise in logical steps, it’s my job, and I can assure you it wouldn’t be. Shirley’s is just a straightforward case of boredom. That’s the problem. Have a baby and she’d be even more bored. She’d always be trying to dump it on babysitters and relatives.’
Mother said brightly: ‘Well you know you can count on me, love. I have ever so much fun looking after Frederick.’
With a sense that events were in danger of getting beyond my control, I rang up Shirley’s father the following week and began a very, but very careful spiel I’d prepared in every detaiclass="underline" about Shirley being depressed because of the miserable flat we’d been in too long, about the landlady never wanting to decorate or replace anything, about the rental market being so hopeless these days with the ludicrously pro-tenant rules the Labour government had introduced and Margaret hadn’t as yet got round to repealing, about the price of property being so high it was unimaginable for two young people to buy a decent place on their own — and I asked him was there any chance, now I’d put a bit of money together myself, because I was saving about thirty per cent of my income — was there any chance that he could maybe chip in, rather massively actually, and. .
He said: ‘Not till I’m sure just how the settlement’s going to go with Mary, I’m afraid.’
It was lunchtime and when I’d got the phone down I looked at the world map on the wall where tiny flags showed all the countries where my software was being used. From Panama to Portugal, it said on the brochure, Austria to Australia. Why is it, I wondered, that I am always to be excluded from the intimate affairs of the lives of people close to me? Why? Why do they keep me out? I was hurt, angry.
‘But why should you need to be told?’ Shirley retorted.
‘Because we’re married for Christ’s sake! Because we’re supposed to be sharing our lives. You complain I don’t understand you and then you don’t tell me what I need to know to have a chance. Obviously it’s been upsetting you. It explains everything. And I’ve been faffing about in the dark for months.’
She said perhaps I was right. Yes, probably I was right. But she just hadn’t felt like telling me. She hadn’t the heart to talk about it. It was so awful. Her parents had been such a fixed point in her life, she’d never even realised really.
She was on the brink of tears, and for once I was allowed to console her.
But over the next months, though it seemed impossible, and above all unnecessary, the tension heightened. Shirley would be sullen and moody on my arrival home and almost anything I said would cause a flare up. I might innocently ask what was for dinner and abruptly be told I could bloody well get my dinner myself. I might, despite office weariness, traffic weariness, a briefcase full of work, offer to go to the Indian shop, pick up some goodies, and immediately have to hear that since I was no good at doing the shopping and always brought home the wrong things there was no point in my going, was there?
Of course, from what one gathers from magazine articles, TV documentaries, radio plays while washing the car, etc., it did occur to me that Shirl might be suffering from some sort of physical/mental illness, or even stress, and that perhaps I should be feeling sorry for her, rather than the opposite. This I honestly tried to do. But then I also thought that if she was prone to suffering from, say, clinical depression (though she never had so suffered in the seven previous years I’d known her), then I personally didn’t want to be the one who carried the gloomy can for the rest of my life, did I? It was a serious problem.