He had never been able to tolerate her yammering when they sat side by side in bed before turning out the light. When it happened downstairs he was at least able to stand up now and again if he felt like killing her. Looking across the table and wondering whether or not she would stop yammering, on sensing this perfectly natural desire in him, he would walk to the fireplace hoping not to offend her even more, at which her yammering would get louder and absolutely to the point. Thinking his head would burst he would get up from his easy chair and shamble into the kitchen to put the kettle on that played ‘Annie Laurie’ when it boiled, not to throw water over her, or to get the spout steaming so that she could hurl it across at him, but simply to make the age-old gesture of brewing a cup of strong tea in a crisis. At the same time he would be careful to leave the door open so that she wouldn’t think he was maliciously trying to get out of earshot, which would justify her in complaining for another half hour at least.
But once they were in bed and the yammering commenced, or resumed, after a short break during which his cup of tea had really worked its effect of hot flushes or spots before the eyes, or throughout the short time of getting ready for bed, there was no escape, and he had to sit there and listen. The more she went on, the hotter it became in bed, her legs and thighs so warm that his own limbs felt scorched, so that as well as craving to get away from the sound of her voice he was also disturbed by the heat coming from her body and wanted to avoid that as well.
As for why she was yammering, there was no answer to it. She had been at the game almost twenty years, and though he heard (it was impossible not to) he no longer listened, knowing from experience after the first few occasions that it was best not to, since if he did his head would burst with the fiery violence of a paperbag overfilled with her cinder breath. Listening was beside the bloody point entirely, because she just yammered for yammering’s sake, though it was also true that she was only a yammerer because he could not bear to listen. If he had been a born listener she wouldn’t have been a yammerer, and they would have got on so well that everyone might have called it having a cosy conversation.
What he could not understand was how a man like him, whose favourite pastime never had been listening (neither did he like to talk much, except perhaps when he was away from home), had married a woman who did nothing but yammer. This constant machine-gunning yammer tormented him because there was little he could do except keep his ear tuned to it, which forceput he loathed so much he was ready to kill her, had in fact to fasten his hands to his side with mental sticking plaster to stop them getting up and doing so, but when she began to yammer he listened and that was that.
His misery was a simultaneous three-pronged pain in heart, gut and arse, compounded by a loathing of himself which made him feel he was walking in the ebony darkness of an enclosed cave so that he couldn’t move in any way whatsoever. If they were downstairs he could get up so as to give himself temporary relief, though only in order to tolerate another half hour before standing again for the same reason. And he had to be careful, in case she thought he wasn’t tuned-in, whereby that accusation would be added to the list she seemed to be reading from with such an accusing rhythm.
Anything wrong with her life, and she blamed him. She blamed him for everything because he was incapable of discussing anything. He saw this, yet even her attempts at ‘talking things over’ in a husband-and-wife way began by her holding him responsible for the fact that it was necessary for her to make the effort in the first place. He began to think she had only married him in order to have someone to blame for all that had gone wrong in her life. It was conceivable that in the track of such verbal convection he really did end by doing her sufficient injustice to blame him for, but only so that she wouldn’t destroy herself utterly by being completely unjust to him.
She seemed to blame him for having been born, because this accusation did not make her feel any better she blamed him for having been born herself. He could see no way out except through death’s wide gate, but in spite of her yammering he liked being alive, so what could he do?
The truth was, and he told it aloud to prevent his brain continuing its invidious yammering at him, that she had in fact hardly ever yammered. It wasn’t in her nature to do so, though he recalled having driven her to it once or twice during their long marriage – which seemed short enough now that she had gone. But, his anger struck in again (though he prayed such destructive wrath would soon leave him alone for good), even once had been too often, and he found it hard to forgive her.
He used to think it was pleasant being married because he had found someone who was as good as a mother to him. She was better, in fact, because his own mother had as often as not ignored him, there being so many kids that she had little time for any of them. So he found in Pam a mother who, by and large, because she was a mother herself, he mostly couldn’t stand. By the time he met her he no longer needed a mother, but having married he found himself lumbered with one.
Maybe he would try to find her. On the other hand perhaps he wouldn’t, since he had no idea where to search. She was bound to come back, because she had no way of getting money. She couldn’t look after herself. No mothers can when they suddenly don’t have anyone else to work for. And she had to come back to look after him because if she didn’t, who would? Now that he had lost her he realized that he loved her as well. He certainly had no mother to go to, so maybe he would look for her. At the same time, perhaps he wouldn’t. She didn’t deserve such consideration.
I’ll tell the doctor I’m depressed, he decided, having driven round the city centre for the last half hour. He’ll give me some pills. But you only went to a doctor if your arm was hanging off, or you had gone blind, or if you were carried in having lost your legs in the wickedest kind of car smash. Otherwise you went on with life, and considered that all such minor ailments would sooner or later pack up and vanish. At least he had disentangled himself from the inner-city traffic system that was so irrationally complicated that occasional motorists from other localities abandoned it after several hours trying to get their bearings, and went off quietly to cut their throats in some leafy lane near Sherwood Forest. He would toss up a coin as to whether he would go to the doctor or not.
He drove by the station and towards Castle Boulevard. I ought to kill her for leaving me in the lurch. The car behind stopped following, was lost somewhere in the one-way spirit-traps. All mirrors had disappeared except his own. He touched the end of his nose to see if he was real, and the tip was ice-cold, so he assumed himself to be healthy. The doctor could stuff his pills up his arse where they should have stayed in the first place.
The only thing he wasn’t afraid of was his work, and he was happy when he turned into the cul-de-sac street that backed on to the canal and saw his workshop at the bottom. The men were already waiting for him, and one of them waved a friendly greeting.
5
‘Don’t like it here.’ She might even add: ‘Coming home today. Expect me soon.’
‘Don’t come back,’ he would write, if she sent him an address. ‘You’re dead.’
So she wouldn’t send any of the leaden words that clamoured at the end of her biro. The post office was warm compared to her room. She screwed up a telegram form before beginning another. People in the queues looked. She needn’t have thrown the paper with such force. Every morning after buying food she called at the post office to write a telegram. It might be better to live with George than rot in the fifteen pounds a week hole of a room she had landed in. Pneumatic drills and traffic shook her nerves, and at night the Shepherd’s Bush hooligans roamed noisily on their way home.