Invitation to the Married Life Read online

  ‘I found my old tent and sleeping bag in the attic. Thought I’d have a go tonight. It’s so warm. Would you mind?’

  ‘Mind? Why should I mind?’

  ‘I didn’t think you would.’

  ‘Course not. You’ll love it. Back to boyhood.’

  ‘Perhaps. You should come one night.’ He knew he was safe, there.

  ‘Me?’ Frances laughed. ‘Not on your life, all those midges.’

  Toby stood up. He, too, felt strong with relief.

  ‘I’ll try tonight, then. I won’t be off till after you’ve gone to bed. It won’t interrupt our evenings.’

  ‘Fine.’ Funny old thing, Toby, sometimes.

  ‘I’ll get the sleeping bag off the line. It’s been airing all day.’ Extraordinarily co-operative, Frances could be on occasions. Often when he least expected it.

  Toby walked back over the lawn, which was almost completely white with daisies. Frances, after a sip of Pimm’s to celebrate her relief, took up a black pen and flipped her file open to a new page. Ring tent people re GREY and white, she wrote, and underlined the GREY in red.

  * * *

  When Thomas came downstairs that evening, he found Rachel at the kitchen table, her head in folded arms.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

  Rachel stood up at once, ashamed to have been caught out by Thomas. She wiped her eyes, though they showed no sparkle of tears. Thomas could tell she had been crying only by the dark spots on her sleeve.

  ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ she smiled, always good at the gallant lie, ‘except that I’m completely overcome.’

  Thomas patted her shoulder, smiling too, pleased with himself. He had not had such an effect on his wife for years.

  ‘Even I can be surprising sometimes,’ he chortled, ‘but you mustn’t expect –’

  ‘– of course not.’

  ‘Drink?’

  Rachel nodded. She needed one. And in a moment they were back to their normal rhythm, their normal places. Rachel began to prepare the supper.

  Thomas stood by, watching her. Occasionally, evenings like this, he felt curiously at peace in his own house, glad of Rachel’s detached, familiar company. He could never have told her this. Perhaps she knew. She was an intuitive old thing in many ways. Also, she caused no agitation, for which she earned Thomas’s unspoken gratitude. No: she just bumbled on, seemingly happy, accepting life as it was. She was jolly good, actually, at accepting the fact that most marriages sloped into a kind of passivity after a few years. She didn’t complain. She was almost touchingly pleased by small gestures – her reaction to this clearing up this evening, for instance, was out of all proportion to the act itself. Good old Rachel. She was a blessing, really. Without knowing him, she seemed to understand him. He’d probably never leave her in the end.

  * * *

  When Ursula came down on Monday morning, she found the cat had moved from the kitchen table to the dresser. With its impeccable deportment, it sat in its china-cat position in a small space between mugs, plants, racks of eggs and piles of school books. Its dish of milk on the floor was empty. At Ursula’s appearance, it shifted its gaze from its neatly placed paws to her face. In the morning light, she fancied its look was scathing, threatening, superior. Again she dreaded the thought of returning to the house, later in the day, and being alone with the cat. She was glad of the usual breakfast noise from the children.

  Ben and Sarah were squabbling over the free gift from the Cornflakes packet, a small plastic clip whose ubiquitous usefulness was heavily advertised. Ursula could never understand why children, who did not lack in toys and entertainments of every kind, were so acquisitive when it came to ‘free gifts’ of minimal interest.

  ‘Well, anyway, if you have it I’m going to feed the cat this morning and this evening, so there,’ Sarah shouted to her brother, long hair swinging furiously about.

  ‘You’re jolly well not. That’s not fair. That’s not fair, Mama, is it? Here, have the stupid thing.’ Ben dropped the plastic clip into his sister’s cereal.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ Sarah picked it out, small milky fingers flailing, flicked it at her brother’s head.

  ‘Shut up, both of you,’ bellowed Martin, putting down the Independent, ‘and hurry or we’ll be late.’

  Lateness was a daily threat which left the children unmoved, but their father’s tone of voice reduced them to a moment’s silence. Ursula remained at the table, back purposefully to the cat, with her mug of coffee. Sarah got up, went over to the animal and picked it up. For a moment, its legs stuck out at all angles in rigid protest, then it relaxed into her arms.

  ‘I’m going to name it,’ she said to Ben, ‘whatever you think.’

  ‘Oh no you’re not,’ retorted Ben. ‘It’s going to be a democratic decision. We’ll put suggestions in a hat and get someone to pull one out.’

  ‘No, we won’t. That’s a really stupid idea.’

  ‘We’ll sort it out after tea,’ contributed Ursula. ‘Now, come on. Hurry. Got your homework? Ben, where’s your jacket?’

  Sarah, sulking, returned the cat to the dresser. She took up her empty cereal bowl, filled it with milk, and put it within the cat’s reach. It looked at her with supreme ingratitude.

  ‘I think it’s a pretty horrible cat anyway,’ snarled Ben. ‘All bony.’ He swung his long blue and yellow scarf round his neck.

  ‘Don’t you dare say that. You know how many years and years and years and years I’ve longed for an animal. . . .’ Tears animated Sarah’s eyes, dividing her long, dark lashes.

  ‘Crybaby –’

  Martin took hold of his son’s collar, pushed him from the room and kissed his wife on the head in passing, all in one long, efficient movement.

  ‘You can’t want a scarf on a day like this, Ben,’ Ursula yelled after him.

  ‘Oh yes I can,’ was the determined shout from the front door. Ursula, her melancholy daughter in her arms, gave up the idea of trying to defeat her son.

  ‘There’s nothing to cry about, darling,’ she said. ‘Cheer up, and remember whatever-its-name-is will be here waiting for you when you get back.’ She smiled, encouraging.

  ‘But it’s my cat. I should name it.’

  ‘We’ll sort it all out when you come home, I promise.’

  ‘All right.’

  Ursula kissed Sarah’s pink cheeks, pushed her fringe from her eyes. Often so extraordinarily grown-up, now, at eight, in rare moments of despair intimations of babyhood returned to remind. They hugged. Ursula could feel the wild beating of her daughter’s heart.

  ‘There’s Papa hooting. Run. See you at half-past-three.’

  ‘Love you, Mama.’

  Sarah was gone.

  After he had dropped the children at school, Martin drove to his College. He collected a package of dreary-looking letters from the lodge, and walked across the quad. The sixteenth-century buildings, of sand-coloured stone, were pale in the still opal light. In flowerbeds beneath the ground floor windows, yellow tulips shone lantern-like through the dusk of forget-me-nots gathered round them. There was not a morning on which Martin was not affected by the beauty of the place, or failed to realise his good fortune in working in such a building.

  In his room, wood-panelled, book-crowded, but curiously tidy for a don, he sat at his large desk in the window, reluctant to open his post. Instead he picked up the latest copy of the Economic Journal and flicked through its pages. He had an agreeable, easy day to look forward to: only one pupil, at midday, a long afternoon in the Bodleian to start making notes for his Thursday lecture. The thought of Ursula, left at home with the detritus of breakfast and unmade beds to deal with before she started on her work made him, as always, guilty. He did what he could in the evenings, took the children off her hands at weekends. But he really could not be expected to return home, after the school run, to share domestic duties on the day that the cleaning lady did not come. Ursula rarely complained, but h
e knew that the undertaking of two jobs (’a woman’s lot – best to get on with it without whingeing,’ as Ursula sometimes said) was both frustrating and exhausting.

  Today Martin was aware of an especial unease. After a moment’s reflection, having cast away the Journal and picked up the Spectator, he was able to pinpoint its source: something to do with the cat. That bloody cat. In Ursula’s quietness, and distracted eyes, last night, Martin had begun to understand the depths of her antipathy to the animal. He had not realised until then that she did not merely dislike cats, and had refused to have one over the years because of all the nuisance of looking after it – they obviously unnerved her on some more profound level. She wouldn’t like to be alone in the house with it ‘spooking around’, she had said last night. She was alone in the house with it now. What was she feeling?

  The question made Martin even more restless. He could not bear the thought of his wife’s unhappiness in any measure. Should he go back home right now, see how she was doing? No: probably not. She would think that most peculiar. Rather, he decided he would ring her in half-an-hour before she went off to see about some garden (he could not remember which one, where) and apologise for his hurried departure. Not mention the cat. See if she said anything.

  Consoled by this idea, Martin switched on the kettle and made himself the first of many cups of coffee he would drink during the day. Once he had talked to her, been reassured she was all right, he would put his mind to his books, the mental lego of economics, which absorbed him so completely most days of his life. Sometimes, he thought, the sterility of figures, percentages, the fluctuations of world prices, cut him off too far from what was left of the romance of life. But Ursula seemed to understand his passion, was proud of his achievement, even managed to assume a curiosity in a subject that was far from her natural interests.

  The only thing, sadly, she could not understand (would not understand, it seemed) was the old and tiresome question of place. His life was in Oxford. Ursula did not like Oxford. Too bad. As his wife, she must put up with it, though he supposed that some far-off, inconceivable day when the children had grown up, he might contemplate moving somewhere nearby. Ursula’s dislike seemed to him so curiously stubborn – endless complaints about horrible shops and lack of sky. Were she to make more effort, rather than preoccupy herself thinking up almost daily escapes, she could come to like the city better, if not to love it as he did- well, used to. (Did he really love it anymore? That was a question he might dwell on when he had a moment.) At any rate, Ursula’s dogged, vociferous dislike of a place most people regarded as exceptionally beautiful and agreeable, was one of the few things about her that made Martin angry. After some violent quarrels he swore to rise no more to her provocative jibes. So now her grumbles were met by silence. Sometimes he caught a look of disturbing anguish in her eyes, and knew that, ridiculously, Oxford was the only reason – everything else was fine, wasn’t it? – or was he, in some unthinking way, an unreasonable husband in other respects? Perhaps he did not acknowledge her talents fully, or take enough interest in her work – well, she was the first to admit that gardening wasn’t much up his street.

  Heavens, though, he was the first to appreciate her great energy, her efficiency, her good humour and loving nature: so many qualities all in one wife. One day Martin intended to tell Ursula how inconceivable his life would be without her. Not that she had ever requested any such assurances. She was not, thank God, the sort of woman who needed declarations. She read the messages in actions. At least, he thought she did. But he could never quite tell. Even after some sixteen years of marriage to a woman you loved profoundly, sharing children, house, daily proximity, you had no real idea of ninety per cent of what was going on in her mind. (Ninety per cent of the gross, as it were. Martin smiled to himself.) You just had to hope all was internally well.

  As light from hesitant sun began to brighten the room, he sipped his black coffee. Why wait half-an-hour? Ursula might be pleased to hear from him now. He picked up the receiver and dialled their number.

  When they had all gone, and the kitchen had switched into the silence which was as familiar as the noise, Ursula opened the window and went upstairs. She had long ago worked out that the best way to deal with domestic matters was to give herself a time limit. This limit varied according to the pattern of her day. This morning, as she had to be at the concrete garden at half-past ten, it would be half-an-hour. That would mean time to make the beds, throw the dirty washing in the machine and do something to the kitchen. Anything that had not been accomplished by ten o’clock would be left till later, much though she detested arriving home to a disorderly house. But half-an-hour, she found, was always necessary for the process of transference – from housewife to artist, as it were. Even so minor a job as the dreadful garden in Iffley required some reflection: arguments had to be mustered, ideas (frustratingly inadequate ideas, in this case) had to be marshalled. She had to clear her mind, completely, of perennially nagging lists of food needed for supper or things to be taken to the cleaners, and pretend for a while that she was as free as any man to concentrate wholly on her job.

  Having dealt with things upstairs, and put on the washing machine, Ursula returned to the kitchen. The cat had disappeared. She glanced under the table and sink, and behind the sofa, but had no intention of looking elsewhere. Relieved that her movements were not to be scrutinised, she hurried to stack the dishwasher, fold the newspapers and wipe the splatterings of milk and Cornflakes from the table. Then she went to the sink to wash a couple of pans that Martin had intended to do last night, before he had been deflected by an essential programme on television.

  She looked out of the window. There was no sun, as yet. The narrow strip of lawn, and what could be seen between a fair sample of North Oxford trees, were silvery as moonstones: strange to think that within the hour they would turn to definite blue and green. The white lilac tree drooped from last night’s heavy rain: cornflowers were rampant in the beds. Ursula had planted them to remind herself of fields of corn surging towards a horizon of Wiltshire downs, where one day she would return. Poppies, which would appear later in the summer, had been planted for the same reason.

  Two pigeons, almost camouflaged by the grey of the grass, were strutting and fretting over a metre of earth engaged in some territorial argument. Fat and slow in their movements, they did not seem to be much aggrieved: rather, they were going through the rituals of an old battle they enjoyed, puffing up their feathers for the benefit of their partners hidden in the trees. They ducked and swayed and muttered encouragement to themselves with all the expertise of two old hands who have been fighting for many a season, and are fully acquainted with the other’s every mood.

  Suddenly, there was a sharp squawk, a clap of wings. One of the birds volleyed into the air, claws scrunched up to its chest, flightpath all askew, uncontrolled. The other was trapped in the mouth of the cat. Pinkish breast feathers fell like rose petals as the cat sloped skilfully across the grass. One splayed wing dragged, fluttering behind the bird, making a noise like the shuffling of old cards. For a second, Ursula saw its terrified eye cast up to heaven in search of its old enemy and friend. Then hunter and prey disappeared under a bush.

  Ursula ran shouting into the garden. She scoured the bushes and shrubs, lifting the skirts of soft new leaves and hunting through the shadows. She shook the branches of trees, causing several birds to fly away screaming with alarm. She glanced along every part of the walls that divided their garden from their neighbours. But there was no sign of the cat and pigeon. In the moment she had run from the house, it had probably slipped through the wrought-iron gates at the end of the garden. God knows where it was now: mashing the struggling feathers and palpitating heart in some safe hideaway. . . . Hopeless to go after it. Too late, too late.

  Ursula walked back over the lawn, desolate, avoiding the trail of small white feathers, startling as first snowflakes of the year. Back in the kitchen, heart beating audibly, she sat at the table i
n a state of shock, running the short violent scene over and over again in her mind. This evening she would ring Ralph and ask him to fetch the cat, find it another home. The practicalities of this idea ran like a sub-title beneath the horrible pictures. She knew cats chased birds, killed them. But never again did she want to witness such a scene in her own garden.

  The telephone rang. Dully, Ursula stood, went to the dresser, picked up the receiver. It was Martin. Alarm further shook her.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing. Why?’ He sounded reassuringly calm.

  ‘You never ring in the mornings.’

  ‘I do sometimes.’

  ‘Hardly ever.’ Heavens, it was good to hear his voice.

  ‘I just wanted to say sorry for the dreadful rush to school: didn’t say goodbye properly or have time to tell you I’d be back for tea.’

  ‘For tea?’ Delight in the idea gave her strength.

  ‘What are you up today, anyway? I stupidly can’t remember.’

  ‘Just the boring Iffley garden.’

  ‘Of course.’ His mind struggled with some story Ursula had been telling about the woman’s love of concrete slabs. There was a long silence. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Absolutely. Why?’

  ‘Cat not spooking you?’

  ‘It’s out in the garden. It’s just caught a pigeon, probably killed it.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with bloody cats. We ought to get rid of it before Sarah gets too attached.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking.’

  ‘Anyway, I’ll be home by five.’

  ‘Goody,’ said Ursula.

  When she had put down the telephone, she went to the window and closed it. Then, quite calm now, she gathered things for her briefcase and imagined the cat’s return. When it found the place barred, it might have the intelligence to understand it was not wanted, and would seek some other home of its own volition. That way, although Sarah would still suffer anguish and disappointment, at least she would not blame her parents for the cat’s dismissal.