She was beginning to stifle. It was midsummer, and the central heating seemed to be full on. She didn’t feel she made such an ideal mother. Practical, conscientious, loving perhaps, but did that make you a real parent? There was no need to shape a career out of it, though she often felt that Mark might benefit by having a man around, and only time and her own passions could take care of that.
‘Do you have any news of George’s book?’ her mother asked, taking a huge cake out of the cupboard, a sight that sent a stab of indigestion to Myra’s heart, though she would enjoy eating it when offered a piece.
‘It’s being reprinted. I forgot to tell you in my letter. I got two hundred pounds in the post this morning.’
‘Poor George,’ said her mother, ‘that he can’t spend it.’
‘It’s over a year now,’ Myra said. ‘Such a stupid accident. It was unforgivable to do a thing like that. Mark was never George’s baby, you know. It came from the man he tried to kill, Frank Dawley. We were going away together.’
‘It never said that in the papers,’ she said sadly, sitting down.
‘I didn’t exactly tell lies, but I kept everything as simple as possible. No one saw the accident.’
‘Dreadful,’ she said. ‘It’s a wonder you weren’t killed. And look at him, beautiful Mark, he didn’t suffer from it, thank goodness. None of you did, really.’
Her father came in, a frail old man with white hair and luminous eyes. He looked older every time she saw him, more brittle and fragile. His hair, always clipped close to his skull, had in the last few months been allowed to grow long, and instead of the sharp expression that had made him successful in business, his face had softened and become more noble. She had always loved him because he’d never posed the same threat as her mother, whom Myra dreaded turning into as she got older. He’d understood her rebellion, in the light of his own which he had generously and good-humouredly suppressed, realising that no matter how far she strayed from them, the cord of affection would never snap if he permitted her to do more or less as she liked. He had been wise and accurate, always too grown up to fall back on the heavy father-culture that had been perpetrated against him as a young man. He’d recently taken to ordering Yiddish novels from New York, and reading Hebrew again, and this made his wife glad, for it brought him closer to her, but it also made her weep, because it seemed as if he were preparing for the end of his life.
There was an air of doom about the house, which Myra remembered as a young girl. And yet it was cheerful enough. Surely the subtle spiritual organism of a baby would be able to detect it if it really existed, and here he was, laughing happily. Maybe it was in her rather than the house. Her father laughed too: ‘He is a little devil. I’ll have a piece of that cake, Gladys.’
They drank lemon-tea amid self-generating chatter, levity that would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been fond of them. When you get old, life becomes less serious, she thought. Having thrown off their worries they made it seem like the prime of life. One had to think up something like that in order not to feel sorry for them.
Her father promised to come out to the country soon. ‘I’ll dig your garden when my aches have gone.’ He piled so much sugar on to the slice of lemon that it capsized and sank, then floated up to the surface for more.
‘One breath of a sparrow would blow you over,’ his wife said.
His eyes glittered, then sparked out, like a rocket on its highest curve. He opened them. ‘This pain gets sharp at times. Maybe some cake will settle it. If your stomach plays up, give it some food to work on.’
Myra stopped him giving a slab to Mark. ‘He’s still too young, father.’
Mark rattled his spoon and mug in a fine din, as if to say it wasn’t true, and he’d eat all the cake they gave him. ‘You can see that mouth shaping up already,’ he joked. ‘He’ll be a difficult man to live with. I don’t like the way that downward curve settles in when he’s not smiling.’
‘Don’t give him a bad character before he’s actually got one,’ she said. He bent over his tea, scooped out a spoonful and blew it cool, then put it towards Mark’s lips, who jumped up and down at the suspense of its slow approach.
‘Make sure it’s not too hot, dear.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ he snapped, ‘by thinking I’m one.’
‘Forgive me for speaking,’ she said.
Myra smiled. Mark was waiting for it like a cat for an unsuspecting bird to come close before leaping. His large blue eyes were settled, as if they threw extra light onto the spoon. He took it, and an expression of uncertainty creased his cheeks.
‘He doesn’t like it.’
‘Be quiet!’
He did. He waved for more.
‘What a boy!’ he cried. ‘A real Russian, the way he takes to his tea.’ There was colour in the old man’s cheeks, and he stood without thinking of his stick. Myra knew that nothing could bother him at such a time. She saw there’d be somewhere safe to leave Mark if she wanted to go away, or be on her own for a while. It was comforting to know. She’d always cut herself from her parents’ orbit, and now realised how hard it had made her life. To stick in the same district, like Pam, had great advantages, for you and your parents alike, and she felt the dangerous lure of giving in and living close by, the life of a widow with one child who would maybe marry again into a state of eternal satisfaction from where you could laugh at things that happen to other people and feel superior because they don’t bother you. If you are part of a married couple living off each other’s spiritual fat and too busy ever to need anything from others, you turned narrow and blind to the rest of the world. It was a blessed and innocent state of self-induced death, protection and lethargy more than love, yet always an attraction to someone who rebelled against it so strongly. Fortunately, she thought, I am not the sort who could ever consider it. But the draw was so strong and real that the desire she felt to give into it almost frightened her with its sexual intensity. She had only to come home, however, to kill such an idea. The temptation she needed, but not the fulfilment.
For two hours they played with the baby, and then she wanted to go home, to get away before she stifled — or stayed for a week. The grip of ease was on her, and that was a sure mark that she must be off. Tomorrow they would quarrel, or she would be bored. It was better for them to go on liking each other than that she should stay.
‘Come again,’ they said, as she wrapped Mark in his shawl. ‘We love having you both.’
‘I enjoy it as well,’ she admitted. ‘I’ll see you next week, and phone you on Friday night.’ They stood by the front gate, her car moving from the kerb and gliding up the road, hidden by the Humber which her mother still drove.
Back at the house she telephoned Albert Handley to say she’d like to come to Lincolnshire — if it were still possible. It was a month since they’d seen each other, and she spoke of her visit as a break from her loneliness at the house, not particularly as a means of seeing him. ‘Don’t bring your car,’ he said. ‘I’ll send Richard for you. You’ll enjoy the journey that way. If he takes the route I tell him to you’ll see so much beauty in this clapped-out country it’ll make your heart race.’
‘When shall I come?’ — hoping he’d say soon.
‘When can you be ready? Make it at ten in the morning. You can? Richard will set out at four o’clock, and be there in plenty of time. No, it’s all right. He’ll be glad to. Loves being sent on errands in the Rambler, and you’re perfectly safe with him. Not a better driver anywhere. A very cool lad. Don’t let him charm you, though. No news, I suppose? Oh well, don’t worry — just wait. It’ll be all right in the end.’