Mortimer Penelope: The Pumpkin Eater

“Why should I catch her when she faints?”

“I don’t know. But did she?”

“I don’t know! I don’t remember!”

“There’s no need to shout.”

“Shout? My God, its not me who’s shouting.”

The incessant company of children leads to this kind of dialogue: it was our mother-tongue, incomprehensible to most adults, and in it we carried on the complex, subtle and occasionally tragic conversations which are the last resort of communication between men and women. Jake, although he had learned the language comparatively late in life, had a more perceptive ear and a more imitative nature than I. He was particularly expert at the intonation and the repartee. Now he said, after a moment’s thought, “It’s you who’s shouting.”

I looked at him as carefully as I dared over the magazine I had been pretending to read. Since that afternoon, six or seven hours ago, I had felt a very curious sensation. It was like being petrified in the moment of falling: the heart had frozen in its leap, blood thrown out of its course, muscles rigid, throat dry with the onslaught of air. It seemed to me that I was frightened, but I was not sure.

It was midnight. Jake had turned the electric fire on when we came in from the cinema, but the curtains were undrawn. Philpot had left the sitting room door open when she went.

“Where has she gone?” I asked.

“How should I know.”

“It seems very peculiar.”

“What does?”

“Well, to come to the pictures and then just … go like that.”

“It’s none of our business what she does.”

“Oh no,” I said, “it’s none of our business certainly.”

I stared at the magazine. Jake lay in the armchair with his overcoat on. We trembled like dogs before a storm. High up in the house beds made little whining noises.

“But,” I said, “she’s left all her things.”

He didn’t answer. I thought of Philpot’s bedroom in our house: the layers of grime-edged broderie anglaise flung over the unmade bed, the spilled powder, little stumps of lipstick and unstoppered deodorants. I thought how in the afternoon one ray of sunlight, if it was a fine day, shone through the small attic window, and how the child who was now asleep in a resented cot grumbled incessantly about the loneliness, the darkness of that room, and said nobody would hear if it died. I thought of how at ten o’clock that morning I had taken Philpot breakfast in bed, partly because the knowledge of her sleeping so tirelessly had irritated me, but partly because Philpot was a poor girl who had no one to love her, and made such a mess of life and wasn’t strong and competent and in command of the situation like myself. I thought of myself strongly and competently and commandingly creeping across the heaths and parks of London every afternoon, returning home to find Philpot freshly pinned and painted saying oh damn, I really, honestly, meant to get the tea. I thought of Philpot leaving us so quietly, as though she were sacrificing herself that we might survive: eyes a little puffy, but with a great air of nobility about her, now I came to think of it, as she waved her lace handkerchief at us from the door and said goodbye. I looked up at Jake.

Possibly fifteen seconds had gone by, but during that time, under cover, as it were, of these inconclusive thoughts about poor Philpot, some of my innocence, trust, stupidity, idealism had been stripped away from me like skins. I was smaller, uglier, more powerful than I had been before, and I felt bewitched by fear.

“What happened between you and … Philpot?”

“Happened? What d’you mean — happened? Nothing happened.”

“Then why did she suddenly leave like that?”

“I’ve told you I don’t — ”

“And you weren’t surprised. Were you? You knew she was going.”

“Leave it alone, can’t you? Leave it alone.”

But he did not get up, change the conversation. He hunched further into his overcoat, staring at me over the upturned collar. It was the steadiness of this stare, not its expression, that was melancholy. I looked at his eyes. They might have been made of glass. They were empty. They moved as I moved, watching me get up, walk up the room, back again, sit down on the sofa.

“You were holding her hand in the cinema,” I said. “How extraordinary.”

“What’s extraordinary?”

“That I knew you were. Perhaps I actually saw you were. But I didn’t believe it.”

“It’s not a crime, for God’s sake.”

“But you were holding mine as well. Keeping us both happy.”

“What the hell does it matter whose hand I was holding?”

The tremendous beats of my heart began to shake my body and my voice. I said, “Oh, it doesn’t. It’s quite … unimportant.”

“Well, then.”

“Except that you don’t usually hold somebody’s hand unless you, unless you want to …”

But I couldn’t go on. Dignity, please, a little dignity, this is the most foolish way to behave, short-sighted way to deal with what is after all the most common …

“It was a mere peccadillo,” Jake said abruptly, as though about to recite.

“What?”

“Peccadillo. Bagatelle.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He yawned, so widely and for so long that it seemed he must dislocate his jaw. For a full half minute I looked at his back teeth and palate and quivering tonsils. His face, when he composed it, seemed rested. “I love you. So why worry?”

“Did you ask her to leave?”

“Oh lord, no. That was her idea.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. She thought you might be … upset or something.”

“Why should I be?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, don’t you understand ?”

“No, I don’t understand.”

“Well, then …” He got up, stood with his hands in his pockets and his head slightly on one side, smiling at me. “Well, then, I can’t help you, can I?”

I stared at him. After some time, a few moments perhaps, he turned away and said, “Look, I can’t see what you’re so horrified about. I’ve told you it was nothing. Hell, I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to marry the girl.”

“That’s to comfort me?”

“You haven’t exactly been a model of faithfulness yourself, you know.”

“I was never unfaithful to anyone. To anyone. Ever.”

“You really believe that? God, what a bloody hypocrite you are — ”

“But you say it’s nothing . You keep saying it’s nothing. Why bother, then? Why hurt people so much, for what you say is nothing?”

“Why do you feel so hurt?”

“Because I care about you! I care!”

“About me ? You don’t give a damn for me, and you know it. Shut up! You don’t care about me , all you care about is the bills being paid and the bloody children, that great fucking army of children that I’m supposed to support and work my guts out for, so I can’t even take a bath in peace, I can’t eat a bloody meal without them whining and slobbering all over the table, I can’t even go to bed with you without one of them comes barging in in the middle. If you cared about me you’d try to understand me, wouldn’t you? All right, I’m a bastard! All right, I’m no good to you! But what joy do you think I get out of this god-awful boring family life of yours? Where do I come in?”

He was shouting as though I were a mile away. His shouts delighted me. I forgot Philpot. I loved him. He was yelling and bawling like a man being delivered of devils.

“What the hell are you sniggering at? It’s funny when I tell the truth for once, I suppose? The truth is something strictly reserved for you, isn’t it? Well, let me tell you, my sweet, you live in a bloody dream world. You wouldn’t know what the truth was if it stared you in the face!”