Питер Ловси: On the Edge

I was happy. Even the first years of marriage to Barry weren’t too impossible. I still had some self-respect and so did he. And the joke of it is that we all looked forward to something called Victory Day.

Victory!

It was Friday and Barry wouldn’t be in before ten. He always picked up a woman after work on Fridays. Rose spat on the flat-iron to see if it was hot enough. A far cry from afternoon tea at the Ritz. She picked a shirt from the heap and spread it out, dipped her fingers in a basin of water and flicked her hand over the shirt.

‘Just like that.’

She watched the droplets darken and spread.

Hector was holding forth about the Britain Can Make It Exhibition as a shop window for his products, which Antonia thought was rich considering he was a Czech. She smiled at a couple at another table and said something about the weather and Hector didn’t even pause for breath. She reached across the table and pulled his plate away.

It got a reaction. ‘Hey, what are you doing?’

‘Haven’t you finished? I have.’

‘That’s my dinner you took away.’

‘It’ll walk away by itself if you carry on much longer.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Never mind.’ She handed back the plate.

‘I forget what I said now.’

‘Good. Will you give me a divorce?’

‘What?’

‘I want a divorce, Hec. I want to marry Vic and go to America. He’s been offered a job at Princeton University.’

Hector chuckled and brought the dimples to his cheeks, which always infuriated Antonia because it made her feel like a cradle-snatcher. In reality he was twelve years her senior, yet such a shrimp that people thought of him as not much over twenty. His springy red hair was the sort that looked no different after it was combed.

‘Vic is leaving? Your fancy man is leaving?’

‘I’m going with him. I’m getting a divorce from you and going with him.’

‘Not possible.’

A harsher note came through in her voice. ‘You’re going to say it’s against your religion, aren’t you? Listen. You don’t go to Mass. You don’t make confessions. You’re not exactly one of the flock, sweetie.’

‘Christmas I go to Mass.’

‘Face it, Hector, you’ve lapsed.’

‘Do I treat you bad?’

‘We’re bored with each other. Admit it. We made a mistake.’

‘This is possible. Divorce is not. We will stay married till death. Understand?’

She took a gulp of wine and leaned forward in her chair. ‘Have you thought of this, Hec? If you gave me grounds, I could divorce you. It’s not against my religion.’

‘Grounds? What are you talking about? I don’t understand what you need grounds for if you want to leave the country.’

‘Grounds — a reason, sweetie, not a piece of land. Misconduct, as they put it in the papers. You’d simply pay some woman to spend the night in a hotel with you.’

He laughed again. ‘You make it sound like money for jam. How much do such women charge? Five pounds? Ten? You think I’m a complete chump? It isn’t just a divorce you’re planning. You want costs. And maintenance. For ever and ever. You want to carry on eating in restaurants and buying expensive clothes. I may not be a great husband, Antonia, but I’m a pretty good businessman, and that’s bad business, terrible business. No deal. No divorce. Forget it.’

She said, ‘Bastard. I’ll just leave you.’ But the words didn’t carry conviction.

Already he was talking about the bloody exhibition again. The people on an adjacent stand had told him that Prestcold were planning to have domestic refrigerators back on the market within a year — far more disturbing to Hector than the prospect of his wife abandoning him.

All around them in the glitter and red plush of Reggiori’s, couples were gazing dewy-eyed at each other over the wine.

‘... I could speed up production easy, but I depend on suppliers, you see. I give you this example. Take aluminium alloy.’

‘Hector.’

‘Essential in manufacture.’

‘Hector, I’ve got a question for you. A technical question.’

‘You have?’

‘How many volts of electricity do they use in the underground?’

‘Over six hundred. Nominally six hundred and thirty DC. Why do you ask this?’

‘Enough to kill someone?’

‘Easy.’ He grinned. ‘But I never use the tube, so you’d better think of some other thing.’

Antonia smiled back serenely. ‘Ah, but I might be thinking of suicide, mightn’t I, little man?’

‘You?’ This amused him greatly. ‘You’ve got to know which rails to jump on.’

‘The live rail.’

He handed his plate to a passing waiter and removed the cruet from the centre of the table, welcoming the rare chance to impress his wife with some electrical knowhow. ‘Pass me those knives.’ He arranged four knives in parallel between them. ‘Now, two long knives — this and this — represent running rails, understand?’

‘The wheels of the train move along them.’

‘Good. Small knives are conductor rails.’

‘ Two live rails?’

‘Positive and negative. Positive goes between the running rails, negative outside them. In a station’ — he moved his place mat alongside the knives — ‘the negative conductor rail is right over there, along the opposite wall. Now, you want to electrocute yourself. For best results, you should be in contact with both conductor rails at the same time.’

Antonia frowned. ‘I’d need to be an athlete or a contortionist.’

‘Difficult, yes.’

‘What would happen if you just hit the nearest conductor rail?’

‘In theory you could still earth six hundred and thirty volts.’

‘And in practice?’

Hector smiled and pressed the tablecloth with both hands to make a furrow between the knives. ‘Here, below the rails in each station they have a pit. The suicide pit. Chances are that you will fall between the rails.’

‘Without getting a shock? This isn’t very helpful, Hec. People do get killed sometimes, so how does it happen?’

‘Simple. They jump in front of the train, so it’s not electrocution that kills them.’

She pulled a face. ‘Messy.’

He laughed. ‘You want to look pretty in your coffin? You’d better take phenobarbitone.’

Rose had been in bed an hour when the key turned in the front door. Barry took each stair as if it were put there to trap him, then loosed a huge belch as he passed the bedroom door on his way to the bathroom. This, she reflected, is the Battle of Britain hero, the dashing fighter pilot I promised to love and cherish.

So how will I deal with him? I’ll pretend I’m asleep. I don’t want a scene. Probably I won’t even mention it tomorrow. The plain truth is that I’m resigned to this every Friday night. I’m resigned to being ignored when he’s home every other night of the week, so why should I object when he stays out and comes home drunk?

I’m trapped in this nightmare. I haven’t just slipped in my standard of living since the war. I’ve slipped mentally. I’ve practically given up.

He thrust open the door and switched on the light.

Rose closed her eyes.

She heard him lurch to the bed, then felt his hand on her shoulder. He turned her over. She opened her eyes. He stood swaying there in his braces, no collar attached to his shirt.

‘Bloody trains.’

‘Where are your waistcoat and jacket?’ ‘Bathroom.’

She got out of bed to retrieve them. If she could possibly help it, there wouldn’t be a scene. Fixing her mind on the things she regarded as the duties of a wife helped to control her anger. It was a woman’s job to keep her husband decently kitted for work. He owned this blue pinstripe and his demob suit and one pre-war flannel monstrosity that he refused to part with.