day must be like. She told me, of course. She told me about how ill-tempered our children had been, or how tractable; about how the time had passed in other ways, whom she had met and spoken to, who had come to tea or whom she had visited. I imagined her in summer having lunch in the garden when it was warm, dozing afterwards and being woken up by Lisa. In turn, she would ask me how the hours had gone for me and I would say a thing or two about their passing, about the people who had filled them. ‘Miss Madden is leaving us,’ I can hear myself saying. ‘Off to Buenos Aires for some reason.’ In my memory of this, I seem to be repeating the information. ‘Off to Buenos Aires,’ I appear to be saying. ‘Off to Buenos Aires. Miss Madden.’ And a little later I am saying it again, adding that Miss Madden would be missed. Elizabeth’s head is nodding, agreeing that that will indeed be so. ‘I fell asleep in the garden,’ Elizabeth is murmuring in this small vision. ‘Lisa woke me up.’
My wife was pretty when I married her, and as the years passed it seemed to me that she took on a greater beauty. I believed that this was some reflection of her contentment, and she may even have believed it herself. Had she suddenly said otherwise, I’d have been puzzled; as puzzled as I was, and as she was, on the evening of May 24th, when she told me about Mr Higgs. She sat before me then, sipping at a glass of sherry that I’d poured her and remembering all the details: all that Mr Higgs had said and all that she had said in reply.
She had been listening to a story on the radio and making coffee. Christopher and Anna were at school; in the garden Lisa was asleep in her pram. When the telephone rang Elizabeth walked towards it slowly, still listening to the wireless. When she said ‘Hullo’ she heard the coins drop at the other end and a man’s voice said: ‘Mrs Farrel?’
Elizabeth said yes, she was Mrs Farrel, and the man said: ‘My name is Higgs.’
His voice was ordinary, a little uneducated, the kind of voice that is always drifting over the telephone.
‘A very good friend,’ said Mr Higgs.
‘Good-morning,’ said Elizabeth in her matter-of-fact way. ‘Are you selling something, Mr Higgs?’
‘In a sense, Mrs Farrel, in a sense. You might call it selling. Do I peddle salvation?’
‘Oh, I am not religious in the least –’
‘It may be your trouble, Mrs Farrel.’
‘Yes, well –’
‘You are Elizabeth Farrel. You have three children.’
‘Mr Higgs –’
‘Your father was a Captain Maugham. Born 1892, died 1959. He lost an arm in action and never forgave himself for it. You attended his funeral, but were glad that he was dead, since he had a way of upsetting your children. Your mother, seventy-four a week ago, lives near St Albans and is unhappy. You have two sisters and a brother.’
‘Mr Higgs, what do you want?’
‘Nothing. I don’t want anything. What do you want, Mrs Farrel?’
‘Look here, Mr Higgs –’
‘D’you remember your tenth birthday? D’you remember what it felt like being a little girl of ten, in a white dress spotted with forget-me-not, and a blue ribbon tying back your hair? You were taken on a picnic. “You’re ten years old,” your father said. “Now tell us what you’re going to do with yourself.” “She must cut the chocolate cake first,” your mother cried, and so you cut the cake and then stood up and announced the trend of your ambitions. Your brother Ralph laughed and was scolded by your father. D’you remember at all?’
Elizabeth did remember. She remembered playing hide-and-seek with her sisters after tea; she remembered Ralph climbing a tree and finding himself unable to get down again; she remembered her parents quarrelling, as they invariably did, all the way home.
‘Do I know you, Mr Higgs? How do you manage to have these details of my childhood?’
Mr Higgs laughed. It wasn’t a nasty laugh. It sounded even reassuring, as if Mr Higgs meant no harm.
On the evening of May 24th we sat for a long time wondering who the odd individual could be and what he was after. Elizabeth seemed nervously elated and naturally more than a little intrigued. I, on the other hand, was rather upset by this Mr Higgs and his deep mine of information. ‘If he rings again,’ I said, ‘threaten him with the police.’
‘Good-morning, Mrs Farrel.’
‘Mr Higgs?’
‘My dear.’
‘Well then, Mr Higgs, explain.’
‘Ho, ho, Mrs Farrel, there’s a sharpness for you. Explain? Why, if I explained I’d be out of business in no time at all. “So that’s it,” you’d say, and ring off, just like I was a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness.’
‘Mr Higgs –’
‘You was a little girl of ten, Mrs Farrel. You was out on a picnic. Remember?’
‘How did you know all that?’
‘Why shouldn’t I know, for heaven’s sake? Listen now, Mrs Farrel. Did you think then what you would be today? Did you see yourself married to a man and mothering his children? Have you come to a sticky end, or otherwise?’
‘A sticky end?’
‘You clean his house, you prepare his meals, you take his opinions. You hear on the radio some news of passing importance, some bomb exploded, some army recalled. Who does the thinking, Mrs Farrel? You react as he does. You’ve lost your identity. Did you think of that that day when you were ten? Your children will be ten one day. They’ll stand before you at ten years of age, first the girl, then the boy. What of their futures, Mrs Farrel? Shall they make something of themselves? Shall they fail and be miserable? Shall they be unnatural and unhappy, or sick in some way, or perhaps too stupid? Or shall they all three of them be richly successful? Are you successful, Mrs Farrel? You are your husband’s instrument. You were different at ten, Mrs Farrel. How about your children?
