A Quiet Life(87)
A bunch of pinks that she had left too long smelt stagnant on the hall table when she went downstairs to make herself a cup of tea, and she picked up the vase and took it down to the kitchen. The stems dripped on the grey dress as she took out the flowers. As she was walking up the long stairs to bed, pain radiated through her pelvis; she unzipped the dress and left it in a heap on the floor, and lay in her underwear on top of the bedclothes, her hands on her belly. Edward did not come in until the small hours, but although Laura woke when he got into bed, she could not stir herself to speak to him. The next morning, however, when she heard the sound of the shower, she dragged herself out of bed to make him coffee and ask how his evening had been.
‘We went on to another party – Amy is wild.’ Edward shook his head. Laura was puzzled. He must have seen a side of that collected woman that she could hardly imagine.
‘Did she get very drunk?’
‘Not just drunk. They were going on again when we left. Monica and Archie gave up when I did, though. Your brother-in-law Kit was there too. Someone said he is aiming to get into journalism. He doesn’t seem the type, to me.’
Laura asked Edward what he meant, but he was unforthcoming: drinking his cup of coffee, knotting his tie, looking for his briefcase, he seemed distracted by thoughts of the day to come. After he left, Laura roused herself and cooked some breakfast. She had arranged to see Monica for lunch and shopping, but although the house seemed so empty, the thought of going out into the city was unappetising. She went to telephone Monica to say that she was feeling too unwell to go out.
‘Thank the Lord, I’m so ill too,’ Monica said in a thin voice, and then offered to come over instead. ‘I’ll bring you something for lunch – what are you craving? Tell me. When I was preggers, I only craved cold martinis and chips with vinegar, and my doctor told me that was the worst I could possibly do for my baby.’
When Monica arrived, pale under her usual make-up, Laura at first thought she would be a welcome distraction. But she quickly found her chatter disturbing. ‘Goodness me, Edward and his friends put it away, don’t they?’ she said, peering at herself in the hall mirror. ‘I look like death. I needed the night out, though – everything at home is unbearable.’ She paused and walked into the living room, still talking, almost as if Laura wasn’t there. ‘At home! I suppose that’s the problem. It isn’t home. I wish we were at home, I do wonder why I married a Foreign Office type when I only really like England.’
Although Monica had often gossiped to Laura in a complaining tone, this was the most negative she had ever heard her, and as lunch went on she opened up more and more: how Archie thought it was time for their elder daughter, Barbara, to go to school in England, but that Monica couldn’t bear to have her so far away; how their younger daughter was talking in an American accent and Monica found it horribly disconcerting; and, embarrassingly, how Monica had lost interest in sex. ‘Archie keeps wondering why I don’t want it any more; I was like a bitch on heat, my dear, when we met – even when I was pregnant – but the last year or two I just can’t be bothered. I look around the men at a party like last night’s, and I think I’d rather go to bed with you or you or you than my own husband – sorry, darling, I’m shocking you. I’m shocking myself.’ And to Laura’s dismay, the corners of Monica’s mouth turned down. Not knowing how to comfort her, Laura offered her a drink.
As she went to pour the drink, she wondered to herself why it was that she found Monica’s confidences so difficult to respond to. She would like to relax into intimacy with her, but she felt apprehensive that the price of such intimacy might be the expectation of similar confidences from her. And even if the inexorable need for secrecy was not always there for her, in a way she felt that Monica was breaking a delicate code of conduct; that there was something threatening to one’s married intimacy in telling such problems to others. But Monica did not seem to notice her unease, and took the martini she brought her eagerly.
‘I am awful, going on about my own problems when you are still grieving for your father.’
Laura corrected her, startled, telling her that all that was behind her now, but she could tell that Monica did not believe her. Was her manner, so flat and uncertain, that of a grieving daughter?
After Monica left it was almost dusk, and Laura found herself half asleep on the sofa. She was still thinking over what Monica had said: how could it be that she was grieving for her father, when she had felt more relief than sadness during the funeral? She had walked away from her childhood home the day she had stepped onto the ship in 1939; she had never wanted to go back there. She had left as quickly as she could after the funeral. And yet it did feel as though there was an absence in her life, at this time when surely she should feel more complete than ever. Was it the absence of war? Was it the absence of any work? Yes, she missed having a role, a purpose in this indifferent city. She could not match Edward’s excitement about the forthcoming birth.
As she thought about Edward and the fact that they were to be a family, she found her hands moving to cover her mouth. Other families filled her thoughts. She was thinking about Monica, and about her lack of love – her apparent contempt, it seemed – for Archie. She was thinking about Ellen, and the difference between the relationship she seemed to have now with Tom and the romantic letters she had written during the war. She was thinking about Mother, and how she still tried to keep up the pretence that she had never sat across the table from Father in dread of his anger, never walked quietly through her own house for fear of disturbing him. You are the only woman you know, Laura told herself, who can be sure in her love. Don’t be afraid of the change to come.