“I want to know why you’re not at the office this afternoon.” She examined the skin of her upper arms critically as she spoke, frowning at the summer’s fading tan which even yet was deeper than the amber of her sleeveless dress, face darkened with shadows of the introspective and secret alarms that beautiful women sometimes appear to feel when looking at their own bodies. “I suppose I’m entitled to hear.”
“I couldn’t take it this afternoon.” I can make neutrons dance to a new tune. “All right?”
“How nice for you.” Disapproval registered briefly on the smooth-planed face, like smoke passing across the sun. “I wish I could stop work when I feel like it.”
“You’re in a better position — you only start when you feel like it.”
“Funny man! Have you had lunch?”
“I’m not hungry. I’ll stay here and finish this round.” Hutchman wished desperately liat Vicky would leave. In spite of the wasted shot he could still break the four-figure barrier provided he could shut out the universe, treat every arrow as though it were the last. The air was immobile, the sun burned steadily on the ringed target, and suddenly he understood that the eighty yards of lawn were an unimportant consideration. There came a vast certitude that he could feather the next arrow in the exact geometrical center of the gold and clip its fletching with the others — if he could be left in peace.
“I see. You want to go into one of your trances. Who will you imagine you’re with — Trisha Garland?”
“Trisha Garland?” A bright-red serpent of irritation stirred in the pool of his mind, clouding the waters. “Who the hell’s Trisha Garland?”
“As if you didn’t know!”
“I’ve no idea who the lady is.”
“Lady! That’s good, calling that one a lady — that bedwarmer who can’t sing a note and wouldn’t know a lady if she saw one.”
Hutchman almost gaped — his wife must be referring to the singer he had glimpsed on television the previous evening — then a bitter fury engulfed him. You’re sick, he raged inwardly. You’re so sick that just being near you is making me sick. Aloud he said, calmly: “The last thing I want out here is somebody singing while I shoot.”
“Oh, you do know who I mean.” Vicky’s face was triumphant beneath its massive helm of copper hair. “Why did you pretend you didn’t know her?”
“Vicky.” Hutchman turned his back on her. “Please put the lid back on the cesspit you have for a mind — then go away from me before I drive one of these arrows through your head.”
He nocked another arrow, drew, and aimed at the target. Its shimmering concentricities seemed very distant across an ocean of malicious air currents. He fired and knew he had plucked the string instead of achieving a clean release, even before the bow gave a discordant, disappointed twang, even before he saw the arrow fly too high and pass over the target. The single ugly word he spat out failed to relieve the tensions racking his body, and he began unbuckling his leather armguard, pulling savagely at the straps.
“I’m sorry, darling.” Vicky sounded contrite, like a child, as her arms came snaking round him from behind. “I can’t help it if I’m jealous of you.”
“Jealous!” Hutchman gave a shaky laugh, making the shocked discovery that he was close to tears. “If you found me kissing another woman and didn’t like it, that would be jealousy. But when you build up fantasies about people you see on the box, torture yourself, and take it out on me — that’s something else.”
“I love you so much I don’t want you even to see another woman.” Vicky’s right hand slipped downward, purposefully, from his waist to his groin, and at the same instant he became aware of the pressure of her breasts in the small of his back. She rested her head between his shoulder blades. “David isn’t home from school yet.”
I’m a fool if I fall for this so easily, he told himself; but at the same time he kept thinking about the rare event of the house being empty and available for unrestrained love-making, which was what she had been suggesting. She loved him so much she didn’t want him even to look at another woman — put that way, under these circumstances, it sounded almost reasonable. With Vicky’s tight belly thrust determinedly against his buttocks, he could almost convince himself it was his own fault for inspiring such devouring passion in her. He turned and allowed himself to be kissed, planning to cheat, to give his body and withhold his mind, but as they walked back to the house he realized he had been beaten once again. After eight years of marriage, her attraction for him had increased to the point where he could not even imagine having a sexual relationship with another woman.
“It’s a hell of a handicap to be naturally monogamous,” he grumbled, setting his equipment down outside the rear door. “I get taken advantage of.”
“Poor thing.” Vicky walked into the kitchen ahead of him and began to undress as soon as he had closed the door. He followed her to their bedroom, shedding his own clothes as he went. As they lay together he slid his hands under her and clamped one on each shoulder, then secured her feet by pressing upwards on the soles with his insteps, immobilizing his wife in the physical analog of the mental curbs he had never been able to place on her. And when it was all over he lay dreamily beside her, completely without triste, hovering deliciously between sleep and wakefulness. The world outside was the world he had known as a boy lying in bed late on a summer’s morning, listening to the quiet sanity of barely heard garden conversations, milk bottles clashing in the street, the measured stroke of a hand-operated lawnmower in the distance. He felt secure. The bomb, the whole nuclear doom concept, was outdated, a little old-fashioned, along with John Foster Dulles and Senator McCarthy, ten-inch television sets and razoredge Triumph cars, the New Look, and the white gulls of flying boats over The Solent. We passed a vital milestone back in July ‘66 — the month in which the interval between World War One and World War Two separated us from V-J Day. Looking at it dispassionately, from the historical pinnacle of 1988, one can ‘t even imagine them dropping the bomb. …
Hutchman was roused by a hammering on the front door, and guessed that his son had arrived home from school. He threw on some clothes, leaving Vicky dozing in bed, and hurried to the door. David crowded in past him wordlessly — brown hair tousled, scented with October air — dropped his schoolbag with a leathery thud and clink of buckles, and vanished into the toilet without closing the door. His disappearance was followed by the sound of churning water and exaggerated sighs of relief. Still suffused with relaxed optimism, Hutchman grinned as he picked up the schoolbag and put it in a closet. There are levels of reality, he thought, and this one is just as valid as any other. Perhaps Vicky is right — perhaps the greatest and most dangerous mistake an inhabitant of the global village can make is to start feeling responsible for his neighbours ten thousand miles away. No nervous system yet evolved can cope with the guilts of others.
“Dad?” David’s smile was ludicrous because of its ragged emerging teeth. “Are we going to the stock-car racing tonight?”
“I don’t know, son. It’s a little late in the year — the evenings are cold out at the track.”
“Can’t we wear overcoats, and eat hot dogs and things like that to keep warm?”
“You know something? You’re right! Let’s do that.” Hutchman watched the slow spread of pleasure across the boy’s face. Decision made and ratified, he thought. The neutrons can wait for another dancing master. Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast… He went into the bedroom and roused Vicky. “Get up, woman. David and I want an early dinner — we’re going to the stock-car racing.”