be sure that he was right, she had checked every few months and found the pages blank. He could have filled it in, she thought, after I took such trouble to get it for him. Being a history teacher you’d think he’d like to keep a record. She felt she would like to make sense of the past; of those white years, 1975, 1976, ’77, ’78, ’79. Where had they gone? She had a mental picture of an autumn evening, the year they had moved to Buckingham Avenue; Colin sulking in the garden, refusing to come in though it was getting cold and dark. He hated the sight of me, she thought, he would have left me for two pins; it was only after Claire was born that he calmed down. Presumably his affair was over by then. Something was missing afterwards, as if a large part of his vitality had been drained away. At times she caught him watching her. He looked like someone staring out of a famine poster; preternaturally wise, still, and lacking in a future that was of interest to anybody.
Here it was: a crumpled snapshot under his oldest socks. Its presence there was a tacit admission. He must know that she went through his drawers at intervals; after twenty years he was familiar with her methods of keeping one step ahead. He was not one of those self-contained men who can keep their love affairs a secret. He was one of those pathetic, guilty men, whose deepest need is to be found out.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, switched on the bedside light, and held the photograph under it. She had done all this before, at intervals separated by months when the knowledge that he still kept the picture would nibble away at her complacency, like a woodworm in furniture. Staring and staring didn’t give you any more information. She was young and slim, the girlfriend; woollen hat and scarf, boots, hands thrust into the pockets of a rather anonymous jacket. She leaned against the offside wing of the family Fiat, the one they had got rid of in 1976. Dark hair, shadowy eyes; the effortful smile was like Colin’s own. There was a dim backdrop of leafless trees.
Perhaps she was a teacher. Who else did he meet? Sylvia sucked her lip, brooding. A second later she leaped from the bed in alarm. Her heart pounded; a jangling scream split the air. She tore out of the room, yelled down at her daughter below. “Claire, for God’s sake stop that cooker timer!”
“What?”
“Push the knob in, make it stop, it’s driving me spare.”
The noise stopped. “I didn’t set it off,” Claire called up indignantly.
“Who did then?”
“Alistair.”
“Don’t be daft, he’s in his bedroom.”
Slowly she made her way back, clutching the photograph. Time’s up, she thought sourly. Life’s solid all through, done to a turn, a little bit longer and we’ll smell burning. She took a deep breath, trying to control the thumping behind her ribs.
“Mum, are you coming?”
Claire was whining from the foot of the stairs. “In a second.” She picked up the photograph she had discarded earlier, the one of herself from the family album. She held up the two for comparison. Her hands shook a little. No wonder he preferred the young girl; for a time, anyway. Date for date they matched. Winter 1974; summer, 1975. I’d know her anywhere, she thought; I’d know her right away. She ripped the photographs through and slipped them into the pocket of her jeans, meaning to drop them in the kitchen bin when no one was looking.
CONFESSIONS etc. (2)
“…that very strange people do congregate. They find each other out and form ghettos. The inadequate personality, the incipient schizophrenic, they feel under threat. Their identity is precarious and human relationships threaten to overwhelm them. But even when a person is totally alienated the need for minimal human contact is still there. So tramps live under bridges, and derelicts in common lodging houses.”
Isabel put down her pen. She wasn’t making headway. Whenever she tried to express herself, jargon got in the way. Years ago, she had been to an evening class to improve her writing skills. It didn’t seem to have improved them. It had been pointless.
And yet, not quite. It was at the writing class that she’d met her Married Man. Everybody has one; you have to meet them somewhere. Colin hadn’t taken the course very seriously. He’d sat there, looking about him, smirking at people’s efforts. They’d gone to the pub after the class and he’d asked her to run away with him. She’d thought he was joking. At first.
Her mind wandered as she tried to put events in order. Her
“AXON: The records are lost/inconsistent/have gaps in them. So many different workers have been on the case. By the time it got to me it was nearly hopeless.
THEN: for months at a time I couldn’t get into the house.
WHEN I DID Mrs. Axon locked me in a bedroom.
WHILE I WAS IN THE BEDROOM—”
She hesitated, then wrote: “MRS. AXON DIED.”
“I could have done better.
“But I made a mess of it.
“Why?
“Because I was frightened.
“Why?
“The fact is I couldn’t keep my personal life straight. There was this awful problem of Colin, I didn’t know what to do about him, he was so emotional, he seemed to need me so much, but I didn’t have anything left over from my work to give to anybody. Everything was a problem, job/Colin/home.”
I can’t send it to the newspapers like this, she thought crossly, I’ll have to tidy it up, there are times I wish I’d never, but no, don’t say that; what a relief it will be when it’s done.
“At that time my father had just retired. (He was in banking, like my husband, and that’s why I went into it when I left social work, I thought it was safe.) He was always in his room, doing his hobbies, or so I thought. In
