In a childish, confiding voice she said, “I want to ask you a favour.”
“Mm?”
“But first you must promise not to be angry.”
“Why should I be angry?”
“I can’t possibly tell you until you promise not to be.”
“All right. I promise.”
She held his hand palm upward and stroked the lines on it with her forefinger saying slowly, “Colin, Clive — Clive Evans I mean — would like an affair with me and I would love one with him —”
He pulled his hand away; she cried, “You promised not to be angry!”
He stood, stepped away, turned and saw her lying back in the sofa watching him alertly. He said, “You want to leave me?”
“No, I … I think I love you Colin. You’re the decentest man I know, besides being my only friend. But I’ll leave if you like.”
“Why? What’s wrong with us?”
“Frankly the sex thing isn’t the fun it used to be, is it?”
“Isn’t it?”
“You know it’s not. You’re still very sweet and tender of course but you leave all the work to me.”
“You said you dislike assertive men.”
“I do but there should be a middle way … Don’t look so miserable Colin!”
She rose and came to him saying, “Listen, order me not to do it. Tell me not to see him and maybe I won’t.”
“I can’t order you to do anything,” he told her grimly. “We aren’t married. We’ve made no promises. You can leave me when you like. I can ask you to leave when I like.”
“Are you asking me to leave?”
“No,” he said and turned away feeling cold, hard and defeated. “I need you.”
“And you’re not angry?”
“Do you care how I feel?”
“You haven’t scrubbed my back for years Mavis,” said Bill querulously. He stood in the doorway, barefoot and in his dressing-gown. Mavis said, “Get into the bath, I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Bill left and Colin said firmly, “Bill must not know about this. If he finds out you must both leave here at once. I mean that, Mavis.”
“Of course Bill won’t find out. I’ll tell him I’m going to evening classes and I’ll always be home long before breakfast. O don’t look sad! I feel so happy and hopeful. I wish I could put half my good feelings into you, Colin.” He could think of nothing to say. From sounding wistful and cajoling she became brisk and sensible.
“I suppose you’ve a hot meal in the oven?”
“Casserole for two,” he said bitterly.
“I bought us a bottle of wine. I’ll see to Bill and be down in half an hour. I’m not as hungry as you of course, but we’ll still have a nice meal and a quiet evening together and you’ll soon see everything in its proper perspective. Don’t worry. Nothing dreadful is happening to us.”
But Colin thought it was.
When she returned from upstairs she served the meal, poured wine and played Scrabble afterward, treating him with gentle, unfamiliar tact which made him want to cling to her whenever he forgot the horrid reason for it. He won the game by over two hundred points. She chuckled and said, “That’s a healthy sign.”
“What’s a healthy sign?”
“You usually make me win by deliberately playing badly in the last fifteen minutes.”
He smiled slightly and said, “I thought you hadn’t noticed.”
“I enjoy winning but I’m not stupid. Come to bed, Colin.”
She got up and kissed the top of his head.
“In a while.”
He sat by the living-room fire wondering how to share the bed with her and respect himself. He also wondered what would happen if he ordered her not to see Evans as she had suggested, but the result seemed obvious: she would pretend to submit and deceive him.
“Don’t make a liar of her,” he told himself. “That would be even worse.”
When he went to the bedroom at half past two she was sound asleep. He undressed quietly in the dark, slid between the sheets and lay apart from her. A little later she rolled without waking into the gap between them, pressed her length against him and embraced him with an inarticulate murmur like the purr of a cat. He had no will to pull away from his only source of comfort. He hoped the instinctive acts of a sleeping woman meant more than the conscious acts of a waking one. He hoped so for a long time before falling asleep.
11
He passed the next day in a numbness which she treated with the quiet efficiency of a good mother attending a convalescent child. She gave him breakfast and the Sunday papers in bed and later ran water for his bath. The weather was pleasantly mild so she suggested a visit to the seaside. He did not reject the idea. She made a picnic lunch and drove them to a long lonely beach approached by a farm track. They found a sheltered hollow and sat reading the Sunday papers while Bill floated driftwood in pools, combed the beach for shells and flotsam, used a stick to engrave huge aeroplanes and airships on smooth sand. When they returned home Mavis made an evening meal with deft rapidity, put Bill to bed at his usual hour, read him a story (which was usually Colin’s job) then drove off in the car.
Colin heard it return as he lay on his back staring at darkness. He had lain like that since going to bed and intended to act as if sleeping when she entered the room. Misery made him less stoical. She entered softly and switched on a bedside lamp. He did not move but stared at the yellow circle cast by the lamp on the ceiling. He heard her undress and say gently, “Hullo Colin. You should be asleep. It’s nearly four.”
He did not move. He felt the mattress dip as she sat on the edge and asked sympathetically, “Are you very miserable?”
He did not move.
“Am I hurting you a lot? Am I being wicked?”
There was fear in her voice. She fumbled under the bedclothes for his hand and grasped it pleading, “Colin please tell me I’m not wicked!”
He said wearily, “It’s all right Mavis.”
She caressed his face crying, “Yes it is all right isn’t it Colin? Make me believe it’s all right, make me believe it.”
Roused by her greater need he sat up and cuddled her saying, “Don’t worry Mavis, you’re beautiful, you’re a queen. Queens don’t need to care. Queens can do what they like.”
Panic-stricken she commanded, “Say that again Colin! Make me believe it! Make me believe it!”
She grabbed him, clawing so desperately that pain made him grip her wrists and use the weight of his body to control her. Their fucking became mutual rape. After it they lay back to back and again he felt cold, hard and defeated. He wondered bitterly, “Is that what she enjoys doing with Clive Evans? Will she give him up now she can do it with me?”
But two nights later she visited Evans again.
12
Colin Kerr usually found his college work a dull business but now it started giving him moments of peaceful happiness, moments when he forgot Mavis Belfrage. He could not forget her at home. On nights when she was away the pain of remembering made sleep impossible. On the third such night he got up two hours after going to bed. In dressing-gown and slippers he filled a Thermos jug with hot milky tea, carried it with a mug to the living-room, put them on the mantelshelf and strolled morosely round the city of Glonda. It was dusty from neglect. Balloons, wrinkled from loss of gas, lolled between towers or dangled by their strings from the edge. Stretching across to the central tower he detached the upper half and placed it on the fireside table. For a few minutes he sipped a mug of tea while contemplating it, then sat down and made changes which would crown it with a revolving gun platform.
A while later someone said, “Do you think that’s an improvement?”