The Collected Stories

before, sitting with Elizabeth, drinking Gimlets from the green Italian glasses. ‘Say good-night to Richard,’ Elizabeth would say, and the girls would go to him and kiss him good-night.

‘Who’s Richard?’ he asked, standing in the kitchen doorway.

‘A friend,’ said Deirdre, ‘of Mummy’s.’

‘A nice friend?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘I love him,’ said Susie.

He returned to the sitting-room and quickly poured himself more whisky. Both of his hands were shaking. He drank quickly, and then poured and drank some more. On the pale carpet, close to the television set, there was a stain where Diana had spilt a cup of coffee. He hated now this memory of her, he hated her voice when it came back to him, and the memory of her body and her mind. And yet once he had been rendered lunatic with the passion of his love for her. He had loved her more than Elizabeth, and in his madness he had spoilt everything.

‘Wash your hands,’ said Susie, close to him. He hadn’t heard them come into the room. He asked them, mechanically, if they’d had enough to eat. ‘She hasn’t washed her hands,’ Susie said. ‘I washed mine in the sink.’

He turned the television on. It was the girl ventriloquist Shari Lewis, with Lamb Chop and Charley Horse.

Well, he thought under the influence of the whisky, he had had his fling. He had played the pins with a flat- chested American nymphomaniac and predator, and he had lost all there was to lose. Now it was Elizabeth’s turn: why shouldn’t she have, for a time, the dark-haired Richard who took another man’s children on to his knee and kissed them good-night? Wasn’t it better that the score should be even before they all came together again?

He sat on the floor with his daughters on either side of him, his arms about them. In front of him was his glass of whisky. They laughed at Lamb Chop and Charley Horse, and when the programme came to an end and the news came on he didn’t want to let his daughters go. An electric fire glowed cosily. Wind blew the rain against the windows, the autumn evening was dark already.

He turned the television off. He finished the whisky in his glass and poured some more. ‘Shall I tell you,’ he said, ‘about when Mummy and I were married?’

They listened while he did so. He told them about meeting Elizabeth in the first place, at somebody else’s wedding, and of the days they had spent walking about together, and about the wet, cold afternoon on which they’d been married.

‘February the 24th,’ Deirdre said.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m going to be married in summer-time,’ Susie said, ‘when the roses are out.’

His birthday and Elizabeth’s were on the same day, April 21st. He reminded the girls of that; he told them of the time he and Elizabeth had discovered they shared the date, a date shared also with Hitler and the Queen. They listened quite politely, but somehow didn’t seem much interested.

They watched What’s in a Game? He drank a little more. He wouldn’t be able to drive them back. He’d pretend he couldn’t start the Volvo and then he’d telephone for a taxi. It had happened once before that in a depression he’d begun to drink when they were with him on a Sunday afternoon. They’d been to Madame Tussaud’s and the Planetarium, which Susie had said frightened her. In the flat, just as this time, while they were eating their sandwiches, he’d been overcome with the longing that they should all be together again. He’d begun to drink and in the end, while they watched television, he’d drunk quite a lot. When the time came to go he’d said that he couldn’t find the keys of the Volvo and that they’d have to have a taxi. He’d spent five minutes brushing his teeth so that Elizabeth wouldn’t smell the alcohol when she opened the door. He’d smiled at her with his well-brushed teeth but she, not then being over her bitterness, hadn’t smiled back.

The girls put their coats on. Deirdre drank some Ribena; he had another small tot of whisky. And then, as they were leaving the flat, he suddenly felt he couldn’t go through the farce of walking to the Volvo, putting the girls into it and then pretending he couldn’t start it. ‘I’m tired,’ he said instead. ‘Let’s have a taxi.’

They watched the Penrhyn Male Voice Choir in Songs of Praise while they waited for it to arrive. He poured himself another drink, drank it slowly, and then went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He remembered the time Deirdre had been born, in a maternity home in the country because they’d lived in the country then. Elizabeth had been concerned because she’d thought one of Deirdre’s fingers was bent and had kept showing it to nurses who said they couldn’t see anything the matter. He hadn’t been able to see anything the matter either, nor had the doctor. ‘She’ll never be as beautiful as you,’ he’d said and quite soon after that she’d stopped talking about the finger and had said he was nice to her. Susie had been born at home, very quickly, very easily.

The taxi arrived. ‘Soon be Christmas,’ said the taxi man. ‘You chaps looking forward to Santa Claus?’ They giggled because he had called them chaps. ‘Fifty-six more days,’ said Susie.

He imagined them on Christmas Day, with the dark-haired Richard explaining the rules of a game he’d bought them. He imagined all four of them sitting down at Christmas dinner, and Richard asking the girls which they liked, the white or the brown of the turkey, and then cutting them small slices. He’d have brought, perhaps, champagne, because he was that kind of person. Deirdre would sip from his glass, not liking the taste. Susie would love it.

He counted in his mind: if Richard had been visiting the flat for, say, six weeks already and assuming that his love affair with Elizabeth had begun two weeks before his first visit, that left another four months to go, allowing the affair ran an average course of six months. It would therefore come to an end at the beginning of March. His own affair with Diana had lasted from April until September. ‘Oh darling,’ said Diana, suddenly in his mind, and his own voice replied to her, caressing her with words. He remembered the first time they had made love and the guilt that had hammered at him and the passion there had been between them. He imagined Elizabeth naked in Richard’s naked arms, her eyes open, looking at him, her fingers touching the side of his face, her lips slightly smiling. He reached forward and pulled down the glass shutter. ‘I need cigarettes,’ he said. There’s a pub in Shepherd’s Bush Road, the Laurie Arms.’

He drank two large measures of whisky. He bought cigarettes and lit one, rolling the smoke around in his mouth to disguise the smell of the alcohol. As he returned to the taxi, he slipped on the wet pavement and almost lost his balance. He felt very drunk all of a sudden. Deirdre and Susie were telling the taxi man about the man in Hyde Park.