Why couldn’t Shirley be pleasant?
By six o’clock that evening I had spent so much time blind in front of my screen agonising and wrangling with myself — Rosemary yes, Rosemary no (and how was I to explain my Friday evening outing?) — that I came to the conclusion that I must, must force the decision at once, tonight, or go mad and quite possibly lose my job into the bargain.
When I arrived home, Shirley had just come out of a long session with her mother who was now quite blatantly using her daughter as a recipient for all the bitter things she had to say about her father. Not something likely to improve our own marriage. The moment Mrs Harcourt was out the door I told Shirley I wanted to have a serious talk with her. She said, with her usual blithe irony, to fire away. Coming straight to the point, since otherwise I felt I mightn’t manage, I said our marriage was going through a very bad patch, we both knew that, and I was frustrated. Well, we had always said we would be honest with each other, and so now I was telling her I was going to be unfaithful to her.
‘You what!’
The fact that she was so incredulous galvanised me. Hadn’t she seen it coming? Determinedly I began to explain. I had never had another girl apart from her, had I? We had been going out since we were seventeen, for God’s sake. And I had never had much fun in life with going straight from school to university to job, because so desperately in need of money. I felt I had missed out on something. Everybody had more than one lover these days. Most happy marriages were the result of both partners having already sown their wild oats as it were. Now I was going to be unfaithful. I had a girlfriend.
‘Why are you telling me this?’ she asked, almost gasped. It was as though she’d been living in a different world.
‘I’ve always believed in discussing everything,’ I said. ‘It’s you who always refuses to talk openly. I wanted you to see how dire things had got. I wanted you to understand.’
She shook her head fiercely from side to side, sat down, stood up, turned round, fidgeting her hands. She even laughed. And she began to tell me how weird I was, how I had simply sucked up my mother’s mad piety, my Grandfather’s coarseness, my sister’s naivety, my aunt’s dumbness too. I should listen to myself. Boy, oh boy, should I listen. I was a bundle of contradictions. I was crazy. How could I announce I was going to go and have it off with somebody else and then try and defend myself. She got angry. When I wouldn’t reply, she suddenly quietened down and said flatly:
‘So it’s the end.’
We were in the living room and I remember we both kept moving rather awkwardly about, not wanting to face each other. When she turned her back to look out of the window I saw her shoulders were trembling and this filled me with tenderness.
I said what did she expect me to do, the way she’d been treating me these past months? Really, what did she expect?
Shirley was silent.
‘I don’t love her,’ I said. ‘I just feel I have to have some fun. I’m living in a tomb here.’
She burst into tears. But this time my teeth were already gritted. I stood firm. She said if only I’d leave her and our bloody ‘relationship’ alone for five minutes, perhaps everything would buck up.
She stopped speaking and cried, still facing the big, rather clumsily double-glazed window where dusk was drawing the last colour from brown brick houses opposite. (Houses, houses and more houses. Everywhere people living together. How do they do it?) Then in a surprisingly sweet voice she said: ‘Anyway, if you think I’ve changed since we met, what about you?’
‘What about me? I haven’t changed at all.’
‘You were so fresh,’ she said. ‘You were so young. So urgent.’
‘No one wants our marriage to work more than me,’ I said.
‘So don’t go and sleep with this other woman. You said you didn’t love her. I could understand if you’d fallen in love with someone, but otherwise, what’s the point?’ Then trying to change the tone of the conversation, she said: ‘If it’s fun you want, we can go and play crazy golf, for heaven’s sake.’ Because we had done this recently and really enjoyed ourselves, an empty Saturday afternoon in Friern Park.
‘I’ve decided,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have told you. I wanted to be honest. I wanted to have this sorted out.’
Very quickly then, looking round her and picking up a few things, she went to the door and ran down the stairs. Her heels could be heard scratching like struck matches on the cement. From the window I watched her opening the garage door, her skirt lifting up the back of her slender calves as she stood on tip-toe a moment. She disappeared inside, then after a couple of false starts reversed out in her usual jerky way, clipping the kerb as she backed round. At the end of the close, indicating left, she turned right and was gone.
A Massive Change of Position and Principle
For the first time in some years, as the car accelerated away, I cried myself. Perhaps she was right. It was the end. Though I very much hoped not. Later I prepared myself a couple of scrambled eggs, reflecting that I’d have to set the alarm earlier than usual in case I had to go to work by bus. Shirley had presumably gone to her mother’s new and unnecessarily sumptuous flat in Ealing (the money that would have bought us our own place) and might well spend the night there, leaving me earless. I phoned a few times, but only got the engaged signal. Now I was getting used to it a little, I didn’t feel so unhappy with the new situation. At least there were signs of life, an explosion of drama after what had seemed a life sentence of static friction.
And the following evening, after bowling (yes, bowling!), then dinner, then Rosemary’s place, the advantages of my strategy became all too apparent. I had nothing to gain from not pursuing my goal to the limit now. So there was no hesitation. At my bright and chattering best — I felt seventeen again, but with the advantage of years of experience — around midnight I got Ros (as she asked me to call her) onto a rather Bohemian mattress on the floor (surrounded by mugs, wine-glasses and discarded clothes) and despite my delirious excitement at this new and so different body performed not at all badly I thought.
I returned on Sunday evening to find a note which read as follows:
George, please, this is a nightmare. George, we can’t let our marriage end this way. We can’t. I know it is partly my own fault, but I can’t help it if I’ve been feeling depressed. I didn’t tell you, but I have been to the doctor about it and to a psychoanalyst, you got me so worried that I might be mentally ill in some way, but both of them told me there was nothing wrong with me. There’s a point at which unhappiness is just unhappiness in the end, frustration just frustration. George, I know that when we were younger, at university, with Jill and Greg, when career and work and all the foreign trips we were going to make seemed so important, I said I didn’t want children. I said I was worried about nuclear war and so on and concerned about what sort of society our generation’s kids would grow up in. Silly things to say really. Now I just know that I want children, my own children. I know that that is the way for fulfilment for me; honestly, I’m just not interested in a career of any kind. I appreciate that you can’t possibly understand this physically, I mean the way I feel it in myself. How could you, being a man? But can’t you accept it as a lover and husband and friend? Okay, I take your point that I promised. But it was an ignorant promise, it was like promising not to eat before you know what hunger means. Can’t you see? You’ve become so hard, George. Why not soften up, please? Come on, be my bright handsome, hard-done-by, will-make-good little Methodist again, then let’s forget the whole thing and head off on that holiday together.