Barbara Vine - The Birthday Present

“But what's the point?” I said.

She didn't know that either, but she was going to wear her new boots and a long coat over a low-cut top and miniskirt. Or maybe the boots and a long coat over nothing at all. It wouldn't be the first time.

THE EVENING GERRY was taking her out to dinner I was babysitting. I am not very fond of babies, I may as well say that, though I like them better than older children. At least they are not rude or rough. But I never told her or Gerry that, as I don't suppose they would like it. Of course I am competent enough with them. I can bathe babies and I know about reading them stories and not leaving them to cry or not for too long. I don't suppose I shall ever have one of my own and that may be just as well. Like I have said, I have very few friends and I don't get out much, but I wouldn't like only being able to go out when someone else could manage to stay and look after my baby. I wouldn't like not being able to go for a walk without having a baby with me in a buggy.

Hebe and Gerry lived in a little terraced house in a street more or less between West Hendon and Edgware. HALT (the Heart and Lung Trust) has its offices in Kennington, which meant he had a long journey to work every day on the worst of all London tube lines, the Northern. First he had to get a bus to Edgware station or walk to Hendon. And though he left work at five he seldom got home before six-thirty. I wanted to see Hebe before he got there, so I drove myself up to Irving Road on the seventeenth by six-fifteen, wished her a happy birthday, checked that everything was still all right for the Friday, and found Justin in his high chair eating very small amounts of banana and yogurt but flinging most of it about the room.

I set about cleaning it up and feeding the rest of it to him myself, something he seemed to quite like. At any rate, he didn't protest but swallowed the spoonfuls obediently. Hebe had gone upstairs to dress as soon as I got there and came down looking as impossibly glamorous as she always did in a short tight black dress and the pearls. She kissed the top of Justin's head from the back, keeping clear of the yoghurt and banana mixture.

“Oh, God, I'm so tired,” she said. “Justin's been an absolute devil all day. I'd absolutely love to stay in but not a hope and it will be a dead bore. The trouble with marriage is that after a time you've nothing left to say to each other.”

Gerry came in soon after that, saw the pearls, and asked where they came from.

“British Home Stores,” she said.

“They look lovely,” he said. “I wish I could afford to buy you real ones.”

That made me feel very uncomfortable and I'm sure I blushed. If I did, neither of them noticed. Gerry went upstairs to wash and put on a tie and change into a better jacket than the one he was wearing, and Hebe stood in front of the living-room mirror, adjusting her hair and applying more lipstick. I must say she seemed to take as much trouble over her appearance when she went out with her husband as she did when visiting Ivor Tesham. She was the sort of woman who would redo her face if she was going to her own execution.

I cleaned Justin up a bit, took him on my knee, and began to read to him, Spot the Dog being his current favorite. Hebe and Gerry tried to creep out without his noticing, but of course he did and began to wail on the lines of “Justin wants Mummy,” a phrase I was to hear a lot of in the future. I got him on to the cat and dog game, which I'd successfully tried before and it worked like a charm, with him being the dog and me the back-arching, hissing, mewing cat. We had a quiet bathtime session, then more Spot the Dog, and Justin went to bed, falling asleep within five minutes.

At ten they came in. I didn't stay, for I had to be at work in the morning. Hebe said very pointedly in Gerry's hearing that she'd see me the next day and I nearly asked what she meant but remembered just in time. They both came to the door with me and waved as I got into the car.

I felt the premonition very strongly as I drove home, but if I am honest, and there is no point in keeping a diary if you are not honest, I didn't feel this would be the last time I ever saw her.

5

The article in a Sunday newspaper's supplement appeared only a year ago and the journalist claimed to be describing the latest craze among fashionistas. You may have seen it. Agencies were being set up to arrange these things for trendy young people, especially those whose “relationships were getting tired.” I'd only read half a paragraph when I realized that this happening, adventure, exercise, whatever you like to call it, was exactly what Ivor had thought up for Hebe's birthday present all those years before. He'd even used that very phrase. It's called “adventure sex.” An agency could charge up to thirty thousand pounds, the journalist said, depending on the accessories, additional characters, complications in the scenario, decorations and so on, to arrange an abduction of one's girlfriend. The pretend kidnappers would snatch her as she walked down a street—she would have previously been alerted as to what to expect— put her in a car with blacked-out windows, handcuff her and/or gag her, rope her ankles together, and take her to an appointed venue. There they would carry her indoors and throw her onto a bed, ready for the instigator to walk into the room and find her waiting for him. Thirty thousand pounds. Ivor arranged his for one thousand, and half of it wasn't paid till a lot later.

It's not that I take some sort of moral stand about “adventure sex”—how anxious we are these days never to appear moral—because I don't see how morality comes into it. I've nothing against it. Sadism and masochism seem all right to me if that's what every one likes and no one minds hurting others or being hurt themselves. But, as I've said, I lack imagination. As an accountant and now a company doctor, I haven't much of it. I'm too ordinary. Dressing up and acting out fantasies I find grotesque, but to picture them doesn't shock or disturb me. It makes me laugh. Doctors and patients, tutors and schoolgirls, nuns and priests, mock rape—but I needn't go on. Though I don't suppose Ivor and Hebe did anything like that, their tastes ran along those lines and when I think about it my laughter is embarrassed. The truth probably is that if a couple of men threw a girl down on my bed to await my arrival—no, my weak imagination isn't equal to it.

THE WEEKENDS WE spent at Monks Cravery were the best times of our life in those early years. The countryside was pretty but not spectacular, and as for our cottage, there are thousands like it all over England: thatched roof, oak front door with jasmine if not roses round it, timbered ceilings, lattice windows, a crooked staircase, a kitchen you have to go through to get to the bathroom. But is there any house in the world more comfortable than the English country cottage? With a log fire burning and the curtains drawn, we were blissfully happy. We had nothing to do. During the week when we weren't there, Peggy came in to clean and her husband, Bob, did the garden. We shopped for food at a supermarket on the way down and on Saturday morning one of us drove over to Great Cravery for a newspaper. Usually we went for a long walk on Saturday afternoon, taking Na-dine with us, of course, strapped in her sling to Iris's chest or mine—to mine now that she was getting heavy.

There are many kinds of mother but only two kinds of father, the besotted and the indifferent. Tolstoy might have begun a novel like that instead of with that dodgy stuff about happy and unhappy families. I'm one of the besotted kind and I've been lucky in that all my children have been born healthy and beautiful and are growing up strong. I sometimes wish I believed in God—and the soul weighed in grams and the age we meet in heaven—so that I could have someone to thank for that. But I don't, so I thank Iris's and my good genes, a gratitude that would please Richard Dawkins.