Authors: Kingsley Amis
He
looked round the dining-room now with a more directed frown than usual, on the
point, conceivably, of establishing just what it was about his environment that
he found most disagreeable. His eye fell on the dining-table and moved along it.
‘Guests,’
he said with unlooked-for tolerance.
‘Yes,
Jack and Diana Maybury are coming in. In fact, they’ve already—’
‘I
know, I know, you told me this morning. Funny sort of rooster, isn’t he? I mean
peculiar. All this I’m the most responsible and efficient general practitioner
in the whole bloody country and a great friend of everybody’s and that’s all
there is about me. I don’t think I like him, Maurice. I wish I could say I did,
because he’s been very good to me, I mean as a doctor, I’ve no fault to find
with him there. But I don’t think I really like him as a man. Something to do
with how he treats that wife of his. There’s no love lost there, you know. Understandable
enough. That way of hers of going on as if how bloody marvellous you are
considering you’ve got no arms or legs. Well, at my age I more or less expect
that style of thing, but she does it with everybody. Oh, very attractive, of
course, I can see that. You’re not, uh, by the way…?’
‘No,’ I
said, wishing I had a drink. ‘Nothing like that.’
‘I’ve
seen the way you look at her. You’re a bad lad, Maurice.’
‘There’s
nothing wrong in looking at her.’
‘In
your case there is, because you’re a bad lad. Anyway, don’t touch it, if you
want my advice. That sort of little bitch would be more trouble than she’s
worth. There are other things to a woman than taking her to bed. And that
reminds me—I’ve been meaning to have a chat with you about Joyce. She’s not
happy, Maurice. Oh, I don’t mean she’s miserable, nothing like that, and she
does throw herself into the life of the place— you’re very lucky there. But
she’s not really happy. I mean she doesn’t really think you’d have gone as far
as marrying her if you hadn’t wanted somebody to be a mother to young Amy. And
that side of things isn’t working out as well as it might because you’re
leaving it to her to do it instead of helping her to do it and doing it with
her. She’s a young woman, Maurice. I know you’ve got a lot to do running the
pub, and you’re very conscientious. But you mustn’t hide behind that. Take this
morning, now. Some rooster was kicking up a fuss because Magdalena had spilt a
few drops of tea into his breakfast marmalade, if you don’t bloody well mind.
Joyce dealt with him all right, and then afterwards she said to me…’
He
stopped, as his ear, no less quick than mine, caught the sound of the outside
door of the apartment opening. Then, hearing expected voices, he got up from
the dining-chair where he had settled himself, so as to be on his feet by the
time the door opened. ‘Tell you later,’ he mouthed and whispered.
The
Mayburys and Joyce came in. I went over to the sideboard to see about the
drinks for dinner, and found that Diana had followed me. Jack had started being
as tolerant as ever to my father, who he seemed to feel could not reasonably be
expected to maintain impeccable physical trim at the age of seventy-nine. Joyce
was with them.
‘Well,
Maurice,’ stated or queried Diana, managing to turn even that short utterance
into a fair sample of her unnaturally precise enunciation. She also implied by
her tone that she had effortlessly removed us both to a level far different
from the plodding to-and-fro of ordinary converse.
‘Hallo,
Diana.’
‘Maurice
… do you mind if I ask you a question?’
There,
again in small compass, was Diana for you. It was tempting, and would have been
near the truth, to answer, ‘Yes, I do, by God, if you really want to know, very
much indeed,’ but I found that I was looking at or near the low top of her
serpent-green silk dress, where there was a lot more of Diana for you, and
merely grunted.
‘Maurice
… why do you always look as if you’re trying to escape from something? What
makes you feel so trapped?’ She spoke as if helping me count the words.
‘Do I?
Trapped? How do you mean? As far as I know I’m not trying to escape from
anything.’
‘Then
why do you look as if something’s after you all the time?’
‘After
me? What could be after me? There’s income tax, and next month’s bills, and old
age, and a few things like that, but then we’re all——’
‘What
is it you want to get away from?’
Sidestepping
another tempting retort, I glanced over her smooth tanned shoulder. Jack and my
father were talking at once, with Joyce trying to listen to them both. I said
in a lowered voice, ‘I’ll tell you another time. For instance tomorrow
afternoon. I’ll be at the corner at half-past three.’
‘Maurice
…
‘Yes?’
I said, not altogether, I hoped, through my teeth.
‘Maurice,
what makes you so incredibly persistent? What is it you want from me?’
I felt
an individual globule of sweat well up out of the skin of my chest. ‘I’m
persistent because of what I want from you, and if you don’t know what that is
I can soon show you. You will be there tomorrow, won’t you?’
Exactly
then, Joyce called, ‘Let’s start, shall we? You must all be starving. I am,
anyway.’
Not
bothering to conceal her triumph at the way events had brought her the prize of
quasi-legitimately leaving my question unanswered, Diana moved off. I uncapped
my father’s pint of Worthington White Shield, picked up one of the bottles of
Bâtard Montrachet 1961 the wine-waiter had opened half an hour earlier and
followed her. In the last five seconds it had become almost overwhelmingly
unlikely that she would meet me the following afternoon, because she was now in
the uncommonly rewarding position of being able to stand me up without
incurring the odium of having actually broken an arrangement. On the other
hand, she was very much capable of following this line of argument and so going
along to the agreed corner to find me not there, which would shove me back to
the wrong side of square one, not to speak of the questions about why I was so
changeable and so selfish, and did I think it was because I was so insecure,
that I would have to sweat through as part of the shoving. And, being Diana, to
have got that far would mean she would know, without having to think about it,
that I would have got as far as it, too. So I would have to turn up anyway. But
I had been going to do that all along.
By this
time I had poured the drinks and taken my place in my walnut Queen Anne carver,
which, though I had one or two older things in the house, is much my favourite
piece. I had Diana on my right with my father on her other side facing the
door, then Jack, and Joyce on my left. As we ate the
vichyssoise,
my
father said,
‘All
sorts of people seem to be wandering about the house these days. I mean up on
this floor, where they’ve no business to be when there’s no banquet affair
going on. Not half an hour ago there was some rooster clumping up and down that
passage outside as if he owned the place. I was on the point of getting up and
going to see what he thought he was doing when he buggered off. It’s not the
first time in the last few days, either. Can’t you put up a notice or
something, Maurice?’
‘Outside
the main door here there’s a—’
‘No,
no, I mean something at the foot of the stairs, to keep them off this floor
altogether. The place is turning into a mad-house. Haven’t you come across this
sort of thing yourself, Maurice? You must have, surely.’
‘Once
or twice.’ I spoke listlessly, my mind and the edge of my vision on Diana. ‘Now
you mention it, there was a woman hanging about at the top of the stairs
earlier on.’ I realized for the first time that I had not subsequently seen
that woman in the bar or the dining-room or anywhere round the house. No doubt
she had found the ladies’ lavatory on the ground floor, and left while I was
busy standing in for Fred. No doubt. But I half-saw Diana put her spoon down
and begin taking stock of my face. I could not stand the prospect of being
asked, in those separated syllables, why I was so this, or what had made me so
that, or whether I realized that I was so the other. I got up, said I was going
to say good night to Amy and went off to do so, ringing for Magdalena on my way
out.
Amy’s
appearance and posture had changed to the minimum degree consistent with her
having been Amy sitting on bed before and being Amy sitting in bed now. On the
television screen, a young woman was denouncing an older one who was keeping
her back turned throughout, not so much out of inattention or deliberate
rudeness as with the mere object of letting the audience see her face at the
same time as her accuser’s. For a moment I watched, in the hope of seeing them
do a smart about-turn at the end of the speech, and wondering to what extent
real life would he affected if there were to grow up a new convention that
people always had to be facing the same way before they could speak to each
other. Then I went over to Amy.
‘What
time does this finish?’
‘Nearly
over now.’
‘Mind
you put it off the moment it is. Have you cleaned your teeth?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good
girlie. Don’t forget we’re going into Baldock in the morning.’
‘No.’
‘Good night,
then.’
I bent
over to kiss her cheek. At the same time, there came a succession of sounds
from the dining-room: a shout or loud cry in my father’s voice, some hurried
words from Jack, a sort of bumping crash made by a collision with furniture, a
confusion of voices. I told Amy to stay where she was, and ran back to the
dining-room.
When I
opened the door, Victor rushed past me, his tail swollen with erected hair.
Across the room, Jack, with some assistance from Joyce, was dragging my father,
who was completely limp, to a near-by armchair. At my father’s place at table
there was an overturned dining-chair and some crockery and cutlery on the
floor. Some drink had been spilt. Diana, who had been watching the others,
turned and looked at me in fear.
‘He
started staring and then he stood up and called out and then he just sort of
collapsed and hit the table and Jack caught him,’ she said in a jumbled voice:
no elocution now.
I went
past her. ‘What’s happened?’
Jack
was lowering my father into the armchair. When he had done this, he said,
‘Cerebral haemorrhage, I should imagine.’
‘Is he
going to die?’
‘Yes,
it’s quite possible.’
‘Soon?’
‘Quite
possibly.’
‘What
can you do about it?’
‘Nothing
that’ll prevent him dying if he’s going to.’
I
looked at Jack, and he at me. I could not tell what he was thinking. He had his
finger against my father’s pulse. My body, I myself, seemed to consist of my
face and the front of my torso, down as far as the base of the belly. I knelt
by the armchair and heard slow, deep breathing. My father’s eyes were open,
with the pupils apparently fixed in the left-hand corners. Apart from this he
looked quite normal, even relaxed.
‘Father,’
I said, and thought he stirred slightly. But there was nothing to say next. I
wondered what was going on in that brain, what it saw, or fancied it saw:
something irrelevant, perhaps, something pleasant, sunshine and fields. Or something
not pleasant, something ugly, something bewildering. I imagined a desperate,
prolonged effort to understand what was happening, and a discomfort so enormous
as to be worse than pain, because lacking the merciful power of pain to
extinguish thought, feeling, identity, the sense of time, everything but itself.
This idea terrified me, but it also pointed out to me, with irresistible
clarity and firmness, what I was to say next.
I leant
closer. ‘Father. This is Maurice. Are you awake? Do you know where you are?
This is Maurice, Father. Tell me what’s going on where you are. Is there
anything to see? Describe how you feel. What are you thinking?’
Behind
me, Jack said coldly, ‘He can’t hear you.’
‘Father.
Can you hear me? Nod your head if you can.’
In
slow, mechanical tones, like a gramophone record played at too low a speed, my
father said, ‘Maur—rice,’ then, less distinctly, a few more words that might
have been ‘who’ and ‘over by the …‘ Then he died.
I stood
up and turned away. Diana looked at me with the fear gone from her face and
stance. Before she could say anything I went past her and over to Joyce, who
was looking down at the serving table. Here a tray had been placed with five
covered plates and some vegetable dishes on it.
‘I
couldn’t think what to do,’ said Joyce, ‘so I told Magdalena to leave it all
here. Is he dead?’
‘Yes.’
At once
she started to cry. We put our arms round each other.
‘He was
awfully old and it was very quick and he didn’t suffer.’
‘We
don’t know what he suffered,’ I said.
‘He was
such a nice old man. I can’t believe he’s just gone for ever.’
‘I’d
better go and tell Amy.’
‘Do you
want me to come with you?’