All in all, I’m surprised how little she resists. (Her wonderful pliancy.) She’s afraid, of course, of what might happen if she did. But then one reason why I think she complies is that she shares the adventure. Yes, adventure — why not use that word? It’s not a misplaced one for what Marian and I get up to in our bedroom. I read somewhere once in a magazine — it was one of Marian’s magazines — that sexual adventure is the only form of adventure left to us in our age. It compensates for all the excitement and initiative we’ve lost in other ways. The only true revolution now is sexual revolution, and that is why everything — look around — is becoming increasingly, visibly oriented to sex. Well, if sex is the only true revolution, I don’t see why Marian and I shouldn’t play our part. I’m not extremist, after all — I’m not a promiscuous man — I’m just an ordinary rebel. Though, sometimes — quite often, of late, to tell you the truth — I have these reactionary moods. Sometimes, coming home on the Tube to Marian, stimulated by the adverts and the proximity of knots of office girls, I wonder: if it’s all so visible and acceptable, and the magazines tell you to do it — what’s so rebellious about it?
All right, so you’ve gathered it by now. My sex-life is really a preposterous, an obsessive, a pathetic affair. A sham, a mockery. Systematically and cold-bloodedly, like a torturer bent on breaking his victim, I am turning my wife into a whore. This same woman who goes, dutifully, to collect our kids from school; who takes them for walks in the sunshine along the Thames. (By the way, Martin gave her the four pounds but she never spent it; and when she came back she said, in Martin’s presence: ‘There’s the money you gave to Martin to give to me.’ Conspirators!)
Tell me, can a man do wrong with his own wife? And are there really crimes, rights and wrongs, in those areas of our lives — you know what I mean — where we are like lost explorers, and right and wrong, with the rest of civilization, have been left behind at the base camp? All my relentless demands on Marian, don’t they all mean, underneath, that I want Marian, that Marian is very dear to me? I’ve never wanted another woman since we married — that’s the honest truth. (All right, bits of other women.) And isn’t it possible that this whole voluntary confession (I never dreamed I would be setting down things like this) is inspired by some upsurge of guilt where guilt should not apply, and that I over-sensitively exaggerate what I suppose to be the shamefulness of my proclivities? What is healthy and normal in this sphere, after all?
Actually, to cut all this shilly-shally, what really fills me with dread is something else. It is the thought that, one day, by some mischance, Martin and Peter might stumble upon me and Marian in some posture impossible to explain, even to a boy who has an inkling (and I’m sure Martin has more than that) of what Mummies and Daddies do after bed-time. And that in an instant whatever trust, whatever shred of faith they had in their father will vanish. What would they say — princes brought up in the security of the castle, suddenly discovering the dungeons? What would I say — groping for the blankets? ‘Now children, all this is normal.’
No. Please.
And it’s an odd thing that I’ve brought the children in at this point. Because all this assault-course sex with Marian, all this feverish searching for erotic illumination — it only began with the kids being born. Or, rather, not with them being born exactly — because do you know what I felt when each of them came into the world? I felt: life is very simple and complete. And there was a time even when the boys were small, when Marian and I used to make love, quite spontaneously, in the open air — in fields, amid ferns, in secluded parts of beaches — when we went out at weekends. Martin nestling close by, asleep in the carry-cot. No, it wasn’t with their being born but with their growing up — with the idea that they will one day be men like me. The older they get, the more persistent, the more desperate I become with Marian. When will their growing, I wonder, outstrip my libido? Or will I have found, before then, what it is I’m seeking?
One day when I go to see Dad I will say to him: Is it wrong, the way I treat Marian? You and Mum were always the fine, confident couple. If you were such a hero, did you always have good, healthy relations with your wife? Even bed-time ones? Tell me, Dad. Enlighten me.
[12]
It is now several days since I returned the television to the shop. They all resent me for it — can see that — but apart from one barbed remark from Marian when they came back from their afternoon at Richmond (‘I suppose you think that was clever. Happy now?’), there have been no demonstrations. They’re shrewd enough, I imagine, not to give me the opportunity to crow — ‘No idle threats from me, you see,’ or something of the kind. By Monday the whole matter seemed to have died down, though the week began sullenly enough and Martin, in particular, kept giving me little hard, vengeful frowns.
But today (Friday) — though it really began yesterday — something has happened. Something I can’t help taking very seriously.
The weather has kept up all the week. It seems we are in for a remarkable summer. I have come home, sticky from the Tube and enervated from work, but with enough vigour to muster, on my arrival, a mocking heartiness. ‘Well, who’s for a game of cricket on the common?’ Now the television has gone it seems only proper to take the initiative over healthier, alternative activities. But, as is to be expected, my proposal meets with wilful non-enthusiasm. ‘Suit yourselves then.’ In order to endorse my position, I have often thought of going out alone, not to play cricket, of course, but for solitary strolls across the common. I might even have a self-righteous pint or two at the pub. But in fact, as you know now, I have been more occupied by something else which both the absence of the television and, indirectly, the warm weather have made more feasible. Every evening this week, before and after supper, I have been taking the copy of Shuttlecock from the shelf in the living-room, setting up a deck-chair in the garden and in stubborn indifference to my family, following Dad across occupied France.
Until yesterday, that is, when I came home to find that the copy of the book was gone.
Now I did not act in haste. I checked in my memory that I had actually returned it to the shelf the previous night; I looked elsewhere in the living-room; I made sure it had not been put with the other copy in the bedroom; I asked Marian if she knew its whereabouts; I paused to size the situation. Only then did I jump to conclusions. Martin, Martin. A reprisal.
‘Martin,’ (with feigned casualness), ‘have you seen my book?’
‘What book?’
‘You know. Grandpa’s book.’
‘Haven’t seen it.’
‘Martin, tell me what you have done with it.’
‘Nothing. I haven’t done anything.’
His face had an expression of grim tenacity, which was confession enough.
‘Martin, don’t play tricks with me. Tell me where it is.’
‘How should I know.’
‘Where?!!’
And then anger got the better of me. If my subsequent course of action seems excessive, remember that it was the signed copy (‘your loving Father’) that was missing. Had it been the other copy — you must believe me — I would not have felt half my rage.
With my left hand I seized Martin’s right arm and twisted it behind his back in a sort of imperfect half-nelson. I raised my right hand into a position to strike him across the face.
‘Now! Are you going to tell me?’