He put his head in his hands. They all thought he missed Jean as a companion, as someone to talk to and share trouble with. And so he did, terribly. But what assailed him most every day and every night, without respite, was sexual desire, which, because it had had no release in ten months, had become sealed-up, tormented sexual madness.
He knew very well how they all thought of him. To them he was a cold fish, stern when confronted by licence, mourning Jean only because he had become used to marriage and was what Wexford called uxorious. Probably, if they had ever thought of it, they imagined him and Jean making love once a fortnight with the light out. It was the way people did think about you if you were the sort of man who shied away from dirty jokes and found this permissive society foul.
They never seemed to dream that you could hate promiscuity and adultery because you knew what marriage could be and had experienced it to such a degree of excellence that anything else was a mockery, a poor imitation. You were lucky but . . . Ah, God, you were unlucky too! - cast adrift and sick when it was over. Jean had been a virgin when he married her and so had he. People said - stupid people and the stupid things they said - that it made it hard when you married, but it hadn’t for him and Jean. They had been patient and giving and full of love and they had been so fulsomely rewarded that, looking back as from a desert, Burden could hardly believe it had been so good almost from the start, with no failures, no disappointments. But he could believe it because he knew and remembered and suffered.
And if they knew? He was aware what their advice would be. Get yourself a girl friend, Mike. Nothing serious. Just a nice easy girl to have a bit of fun with. Perhaps you could do that if you’d been used to kicking over the traces. He had never been any woman’s lover but Jean’s. Sex for him had been Jean. They didn’t realise that telling him to get another woman would be like telling Gemma Lawrence to get another child.
He took off his clothes and lay face downwards, his fists carefully clenched and pushed under the pillow.
Chapter 4
If Mike made the slightest effort at an apology, Grace decided, she wouldn’t say a word. Of course, he had to work and many times he couldn’t get away without putting his job in jeopardy. She knew what that meant. Before she came to be his housekeeper she had had men friends, some who were just friends and some, a few, who were lovers, and often she had had to break a date because there was an emergency on at the hospital. But the next day she had always phoned or written a note to explain why.
Mike wasn’t her lover but only her brother-in-law. Did that mean he owed her nothing, not even, common politeness? And had you the right to stand up your children without a word, even when your son was trembling with nerves at nearly midnight because he couldn’t believe he’d got his algebra right and old Parminter, the maths man, would put him in detention if he hadn’t?
She cooked eggs and bacon for the lot of them and laid the dining table with a clean cloth. Not for the first time she wished her sister hadn’t been such an excellent housekeeper, so correct and near-perfect in everything she did, but at least slackened to the extent of serving breakfast in the kitchen. Living up to Jean made life a bit of a burden.
She hadn’t meant to make a pun and she didn’t laugh. Her face hardened when Mike came down, grunted to the children and took his place at the table without a word. He wasn’t going to mention last night. Well, she would.
“That algebra was perfectly O.K., John.”
The boy’s face lit as it always did when Burden spoke to him.
“I reckoned it was. I don’t really care about it, only old Mint Face will keep me in if it’s not. I don’t suppose you’d give me a lift to school.”
“Too busy,” said Burden. “The walk does you good.” He smiled, but not too kindly, at his daughter. ‘And you too, miss,” be said. “Right, get going. It’s nearly half past.”
Grace didn’t usually see them to the door but she did today to make up for their father’s hardness. When she came back Burden was on his second cup of tea and before she could stop herself she had burst into a long tirade all about John’s nerves and Pat’s bewilderment and the way be left them all alone.
He heard her out and then he said, “Why is it that women” - he corrected himself, making the inevitable exception - “most women - can’t realise men have to work? If I didn’t work God knows what would happen to the lot of you.”
“Were you working when Mrs. Finch saw you sitting in the car in Cheriton Forest?”
“Mrs. Finch,” he flared, “can mind her own bloody business!”
Grace turned her back. She found she was slowly counting to ten. Then she said, “Mike, I do understand. I can imagine how you feel”
“I doubt, that.”
“Well, I think I can. But John and Pat can’t. John needs you and he needs you cheerful and matter-of- fact and - and like you used to be. Mike, couldn’t you get home early tonight? There’s a film they’d both like to see. It doesn’t start till seven-thirty, so you wouldn’t have to be home till seven. We could all go. It would mean so much to them.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll do my best. Don’t look like that, Grace. I’ll be home by seven.”
Her face lit up. She did something she hadn’t done since his wedding. She bent over and kissed his cheek. Then she began quickly to clear the table. Her back was to him so that she didn’t see the shiver he gave and the way he put his hand up to his face like a man who has been stung.
Gemma Lawrence had put on clean jeans and a clean thick sweater. Her hair was tied back in a bunch with a piece of ribbon and she smelt of soap like a good clean child.
“I slept all night.”
He smiled at her. “Cheers for Dr. Lomax,” he said.
“Are they still searching?”
“Of course. Didn’t I promise you? We’ve borrowed a whole army of coppers from all the surrounding districts.”
“Dr. Lomax was very kind. D’you know, he said that when he was living in Scotland before he came here his own little boy was missing and they found him in a shepherd’s hut lying asleep, cuddling the sheep-dog. He’d wandered for miles and this dog had found him and looked after him like a lost lamb. It reminded me of Romulus and Remus and the wolf.”
Burden didn’t know who Romulus and Remus were, but he laughed and said, “Well, what did I tell you?” He wasn’t going to spoil her hopes now by pointing out that this wasn’t Scotland, a place of lonely mountains and friendly dogs. “What are you going to do today? I don’t want you to be alone.”
“Mrs. Crantock’s asked me to lunch and the neighbours keep coming in. People are very kind. I wish I had some closer friends here. All my friends are in London.”
“The best thing for worry,” he said, “is work. Take your mind off things.”