She picked up the suitcase and told Bill, “Open the front door.”
Bill did.
“Mavis,” said Colin, “borrow my car but I want it back — tomorrow night, if possible.”
“I’m not a thief, don’t worry,” she muttered.
“Goodbye,” said Colin.
“Say goodbye,” she commanded Bill.
“Goodbye,” said Bill.
The door closed behind mother and son and that was the last time Colin Kerr saw Bill Belfrage.
17
He heard the car returning soon after eleven on Monday morning. He heard her enter the front door and climb the stairs. She came into the bedroom carrying a suitcase, went straight to the dressing-table, opened the top drawer and half emptied it before noticing him in bed watching her. Startled she said, “Hullo! Why are you not at work?”
He did not answer. Partly amused, partly disdainful she looked at a glass and half-full vodka bottle on the bedside table and asked, “Are you drinking?”
“Yes,” he said thickly. “Don’t like it much.”
“Then stop it. You’d better phone Gordon as soon as possible. I’m here to clear out the last of my things and leave the keys and the car.”
She finished packing then sat for a moment not looking at him, twisting her fingers together and saying, “Colin I’m not angry that you hit me, please don’t think that. I’m surprised now you didn’t do it sooner. But we’ve become bad for each other, very bad, I don’t know why. We’d better not meet again. I also think you should send for your father. You need company — someone to look after you — but there’s clean socks and underwear here which should last a fortnight.”
He said loudly, “I don’t want, in a day, or a week, or a fortnight, to find in a drawer the socks you cleaned and folded up for me yesterday morning when we were both happy.”
“Well, I think you should very soon get in touch with Gordon. There — I’ve put the keys in this little dish. Goodbye.”
“Mavis!” he cried, heaving himself up a little on an elbow and blinking at her. She paused in the doorway, watching him in a haunted way. His thick, clogged voice tried to reassure her.
“Mavis whatever happens don worry. Good things don go bad because they nevr last. Y’re all right Mavis. Whatever happens evything right. Member that!”
She hurried away and he heard the front door shut
and shortly after got up, pulled a dressing-gown over his pyjamas, took a pillow from the bed and carried it down to the kitchen. Here he slightly scorched his fingers removing a metal cap covering a pilot light on the cooker. Stooping he managed, after several efforts, to blow the light out. Opening the oven door he removed two sliding grids, put the pillow inside, turned the oven burners full on then lay on the kitchen floor with head on the pillow breathing deeply. He breathed deeply for what seemed several minutes then wondered why the only alteration to mind and body seemed a greater sobriety. When small he had heard his mother’s friends whisper solemnly, “she put her head in the gas oven”, “they put their heads in the gas oven”, so had thought gassing a swift and simple way to die, but of course gossip always simplifies things. He tried to consider the matter scientifically. If coal gas was lighter than air it was flowing up to the kitchen ceiling, so would not suffocate him until enough had collected to fill the room down to the level of his nostrils. If heavier than air it was pouring past him onto the kitchen floor and would only work when it had risen upward to cover him like water. Should he stand up and start again by covering the oven with a tent of hanging blankets and crawling under? But perhaps the prospect of death had so speeded his thinking that what now seemed ten minutes was only a few seconds. At that moment he heard the front door open. Gordon was now the only other person with a key to it. With Keystone Cops rapidity Colin jumped up from the floor, switched off the oven, snatched out the pillow, closed the cooker door.
Gordon entered the kitchen and found his son sitting at the table with folded arms on a pillow. Colin said, “Hullo Dad.”
“What’s wrong with you? Why’s your phone off the hook?”
“Headache.”
“Faint smell of gas in here.”
“Is there?”
Colin got up and went to the cooker, sniffed, peered and said, “The pilot light’s gone out.”
He relit it and asked, “A cup of tea?”
“Sit down. I’ll make it.”
Colin sat. Gordon filled the electric kettle, switched it on and asked, “Where’s Mavis?”
“Left me.”
After a moment Gordon murmured, “I see,” and sat down facing him, then pointed a forefinger and said urgently, “Listen son. Listen. When a thing like this happens to a man the first thing he must do is, cut his losses.” Colin stared at him then started laughing. Three seconds later the laughter became its opposite. With elbow on table and brow on fist Colin shook with almost silent sobs. Gordon sat watching him until the kettle boiled.
18
One evening three months later Clive Evans watched a rugby match on television while Mavis lay on the hearthrug reading a Sunday paper, fingers pressing ears to shut out the commentator’s gabble. The game ended. Evans switched off the set, yawned and said, “They should have won. I don’t know who’s to blame for the result — them, the referee or their opponents, but they should have won.”
Mavis turned a page of the paper.
“I’m going out for an hour or two, Mavis. See you about eleven.”
“For a drink I suppose.”
“That’s right.”
“And I’m not coming?”
“I’ll be seeing Jack and Ernie Thomson and Hamish Cunningham most likely. Do you like them Mavis?”
“I think they’re bores.”
“And you don’t hide your feelings, do you? Frankly, Mavis, you’re an embarrassment in certain company. Why do you want to meet my boring acquaintances?”
“I’m lonely,” she said in a low voice.
Evans sighed, chose an apple from a bowl, ate it thoughtfully then said, “I’m sorry you’re lonely Mavis but what can I do? We could kill the next two hours watching telly or playing rummy but that would make two people miserable instead of one. We’d be like married couples who stop each other enjoying the things they can’t share so lead lives that are half envy and half boredom. I enjoy my boring friends. I won’t stop meeting them because you don’t enjoy them and have no friends of your own.”
“You explain everything beautifully,” Mavis said with a bitterness which Evans found infectious. Lifting the fruit bowl he laid it beside her saying softly, “Look Mavis! Lovely apples for you. Try one. They’re delicious. And here’s a bookcase half a yard away. The best minds in human history, Shakespeare, George Eliot, Agatha Christie, Edna O’Brien have sweated blood to fill these shelves for you. Or here’s television, our window on the world, a choice of three windows nowadays. Not a night goes by without it showing people slaughtered by bombs in Asia or famine in Africa. Watch them doing it and feel privileged Mavis. Or do you want the sound of a friendly human voice? Try the telephone! Dial the speaking clock and find what the time will be on the third stroke.”
His voice had grown louder but now, losing his temper, he thrust his face toward hers and said in spitting whisper, “Do anything, Mavis, but shut me up in your depressing little predicament for the next two hours.”
She cried out, “I wish I hadn’t sent Bill away! He loved me.”
“Kids have no choice, have they?” said Evans soberly. “Funny. I never thought there was cruelty in me but when you tighten your sullen screws on me the stuff comes bubbling out, doesn’t it?”