“And then?”
Ryan ran a hand through his hair. “Then I asked her to meet me for a drink…you know how it goes. You know the rest. It’s not interesting, is it?”
“Well, only in one respect.”
“And what’s that?”
“I hoped you could enlighten me as to why you let her get pregnant!”
“I didn’t ‘let her.’ What do you mean? You’d think—I know she’s only eighteen, you’ve pointed that out, but you’d think she’d have the sense to swallow a pill.”
“She told you she was on the pill?”
Mr. Ryan stared at him, mute; then each capillary flushed and blossomed, turning him pink from his hairline to the white collar of his striped shirt.
“It’s a fad,” Colin said calmly. “They don’t like the pill. I thought you’d come to an agreement about it. Natural methods.”
“What?” Ryan said. “What are you talking about?”
“Sorry. I’d have broken it more gently…not that it matters now. Academic interest, as people say.”
“It’s of more than academic interest to me! What was I supposed to do?”
“Withdraw, I think. It’s natural population control. Peasants do it. In Italy. There’s a book about it.”
“Well, I must have missed that.” He was scarlet now with shock and indignation. “I’ll have to join the Book of the Month Club, won’t I, before I pick a girl up again, I’ll have to go by W. H. Smith and check out what bloody insanities she might have in store for me. Is that right?”
“Or go for a woman of thirty,” Colin said. “They’d be on the pill, wouldn’t mind poisoning themselves for a fine upstanding man like you. Oh, really, Ryan, get hold of yourself, calm down, if you’ve any brain there won’t be a next time. Does your wife know?”
“Does she know? Your daughter told her on the phone. When I got home she was waiting. I knew right away there was something up. She said, ‘I’ve had a most disturbing phone call from a girl called Suzanne.’ That was it. I had to tell her everything.”
Plod on, Colin thought; the old pedestrian tone.
“I think Suzanne expects you to leave your wife and set up with her.”
“Leave my wife?”
“I’m afraid she took your relationship too seriously.”
Ryan covered his face with his hands. “I’ve been conned all along then, haven’t I?” he said wearily. “This wasn’t my understanding of it. Not my understanding at all. It was just…a fling. One of those things that you do.”
“A fling?” Colin said. “Come on, mate. This is 1984. Victorian Values.”
“Nothing Victorian about the way your daughter ran after me—”
“No, but there is this about it,” Colin said patiently, “that you pay for what you do. It isn’t the scot-free seventies, you can’t expect to go littering the countryside with your by-blows and expect the state to pick up the tab. You’ve got to feel the guilt, Mr. Ryan, you’ve got to put your hand in your pocket. You’d really better think of limiting your activities. Or you might get one of these special diseases.”
There was a short silence. Ryan slumped in his chair. “I offered to pay for the abortion.”
“She doesn’t want one. Anyway, it’s too late for that.”
“Girls today…I can’t take it in.” With his fingertips Ryan worked the skin above his eyebrows. “She must understand…you must make her understand…I can’t leave my wife. It’s simply not one of the options. Isabel’s not well.”
“Not well?” Colin said sharply. Ryan sat up, at his tone.
“Her nerves. At least I think it’s her nerves. There’s something amiss. To be honest—may I be honest with you?”
“Feel free.”
“I suppose I thought, with Suzanne, that she would take my mind off things. I’m a very troubled man, Mr. Sidney. So would you be, if you had Isabel to deal with.”
“Would I?”
“You see, Isabel was twenty-six when I met her, and unmarried. No one had taken her on. I thought I was her first lover, though later I learned different. She was wary of me, very wary, do you know what I mean? She put men off, men in general. It took me months to get anywhere near her. The day we were married I don’t think I knew her at all.”
Ryan picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and began to fold and pleat it between his fingers. “And do you know her now?” Colin asked.
“Oh, now…She drinks. Gin mostly. Or whisky. Quite a lot. She has rages, the most horrible emotional storms. If you knew her you’d understand why I looked elsewhere, but at the same time, as a practical matter, if I left her what would she do? I can’t just dump her, can I? She can’t take care of herself.”
“Look,” Colin said desperately. “You don’t have to tell me any of this.”
“Oh, but it’s a relief, get it off my chest. Her father died just recently in hospital, and that’s made things worse, because they were always at outs, you know, and she’s got some idea that she wished him dead. It seems that
