Part 15 (1/2)

”It's a fad,” Colin said calmly. ”They don't like the pill. I thought you'd come to an agreement about it. Natural methods.”

”What?” Ryan said. ”What are you talking about?”

”Sorry. I'd have broken it more gently...not that it matters now. Academic interest, as people say.”

”It's of more than academic interest to me! What was I supposed to do?”

”Withdraw, I think. It's natural population control. Peasants do it. In Italy. There's a book about it.”

”Well, I must have missed that.” He was scarlet now with shock and indignation. ”I'll have to join the Book of the Month Club, won't I, before I pick a girl up again, I'll have to go by W. H. Smith and check out what b.l.o.o.d.y insanities she might have in store for me. Is that right?”

”Or go for a woman of thirty,” Colin said. ”They'd be on the pill, wouldn't mind poisoning themselves for a fine upstanding man like you. Oh, really, Ryan, get hold of yourself, calm down, if you've any brain there won't be a next time. Does your wife know?”

”Does she know? Your daughter told her on the phone. When I got home she was waiting. I knew right away there was something up. She said, 'I've had a most disturbing phone call from a girl called Suzanne.' That was it. I had to tell her everything.”

Plod on, Colin thought; the old pedestrian tone.

”I think Suzanne expects you to leave your wife and set up with her.”

”Leave my wife?”

”I'm afraid she took your relations.h.i.+p too seriously.”

Ryan covered his face with his hands. ”I've been conned all along then, haven't I?” he said wearily. ”This wasn't my understanding of it. Not my understanding at all. It was just...a fling. One of those things that you do.”

”A fling?” Colin said. ”Come on, mate. This is 1984. Victorian Values.”

”Nothing Victorian about the way your daughter ran after me-”

”No, but there is this about it,” Colin said patiently, ”that you pay for what you do. It isn't the scot-free seventies, you can't expect to go littering the countryside with your by-blows and expect the state to pick up the tab. You've got to feel the guilt, Mr. Ryan, you've got to put your hand in your pocket. You'd really better think of limiting your activities. Or you might get one of these special diseases.”

There was a short silence. Ryan slumped in his chair. ”I offered to pay for the abortion.”

”She doesn't want one. Anyway, it's too late for that.”

”Girls today...I can't take it in.” With his fingertips Ryan worked the skin above his eyebrows. ”She must understand...you must make her understand...I can't leave my wife. It's simply not one of the options. Isabel's not well.”

”Not well?” Colin said sharply. Ryan sat up, at his tone.

”Her nerves. At least I think it's her nerves. There's something amiss. To be honest-may I be honest with you?”

”Feel free.”

”I suppose I thought, with Suzanne, that she would take my mind off things. I'm a very troubled man, Mr. Sidney. So would you be, if you had Isabel to deal with.”

”Would I?”

”You see, Isabel was twenty-six when I met her, and unmarried. No one had taken her on. I thought I was her first lover, though later I learned different. She was wary of me, very wary, do you know what I mean? She put men off, men in general. It took me months to get anywhere near her. The day we were married I don't think I knew her at all.”

Ryan picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and began to fold and pleat it between his fingers. ”And do you know her now?” Colin asked.

”Oh, now...She drinks. Gin mostly. Or whisky. Quite a lot. She has rages, the most horrible emotional storms. If you knew her you'd understand why I looked elsewhere, but at the same time, as a practical matter, if I left her what would she do? I can't just dump her, can I? She can't take care of herself.”

”Look,” Colin said desperately. ”You don't have to tell me any of this.”

”Oh, but it's a relief, get it off my chest. Her father died just recently in hospital, and that's made things worse, because they were always at outs, you know, and she's got some idea that she wished him dead. It seems that before he died he told her he'd got...well, I don't know, some sort of responsibility, an illegitimate child I think, some woman he met in a park. Now she goes on and on about it. She talks about her life, the life she's had.”

”We all have a life.”

”But you have to put the past behind you, don't you?”

”If it will let you.”

”That's what she says. She says time's circular, she can feel it snapping at her ankles.”

”She has a point.”

”There was this other man, before we met.” He had made an aeroplane; he held it up, admiring it distractedly. ”In the last few months she's talked about him all the time. She says she thinks he understood her, as much as anyone has ever understood her. But he let her down. Of course, with her being as she is, I don't know if he ever existed. She might have made him up to torment me.”

Made him up? ”No, I don't think so,” Colin said. ”She wouldn't do that, would she?”

”She can go back to him if she can find him.” Ryan sniffed. ”Let him have an innings.”

”Perhaps he wouldn't want her now.”

”Not if he knew her, he wouldn't want her. Not if he knew how she was now.”

”Not anyway. It's a long time ago. We have to try, you know-” he spoke gently, realising it-”to put ourselves together in the circ.u.mstances in which we find ourselves.”

”But she doesn't, do you see? Isabel gets drunk on her past, she goes crazy on it. She used to be a social worker, I suppose she saw some terrible sights. Sometimes she talks about this old woman who locked her in a room, and about these invisible things that came out and touched her legs. She says she thought she was going to die.”

Colin felt afraid; a tight ball of shame and regret pushed up into his diaphragm, shortening his breath. He stood up, pus.h.i.+ng his chair away clumsily, and walked across to the far wall. He inspected the seascape. ”Perhaps she needs help. You know. A doctor. That kind of help.”

”Help? She needs an exorcism. Oh, she can put on a good front. All the social work skills. They know how to detect neurotics, you see, and alcoholics, and so they know how to pretend they aren't. She keeps herself on a very tight rein. You wouldn't know, to meet her, that she's had breakdowns.”

”Breakdowns?”

”Two, three. I'm not sure really. They all shade into one another.”

”I had no idea.”

”No, why should you have? I didn't tell Suzanne, except just the usual, you know, the complaints one makes. Suzanne seemed to understand me, at the time-” He shook his head. ”I wouldn't have thought that she'd have such weird ideas, but you can never tell, can you?”

Colin examined the picture, looked at the cracks in the frame. How could Isabel have settled for Jim Ryan? But all marriages are mysteries. What had Suzanne seen in him? Weakness; something of her father perhaps. Strength was being like Sylvia; making your opinions felt. Ryan was still flushed, his thin straw hair stuck up in tufts where he had raked his fingers through it when he talked about Isabel. He was a ma.s.s of little tics, of amoral reflexes, of tiny mental knee-jerks that kept him out of guilt and anguish and justified himself to himself.

”Do you always say people are mad if they threaten to inconvenience you?” Colin turned away from the wall. But his heart was not in it. Suzanne was abandoned; Isabel was sick. Sylvia was at home, waiting to know what he had made of the situation.

”Well, it is an extraordinary idea, you have to admit,” Ryan said. ”Looking to Italian peasants for advice on birth control. It's nearly as daft as some of Isabel's ideas. I sometimes think, you know, all these people, walking the streets, pretending to be sane-they ought to go out at random and pick up a few people, and examine them to see what delusions they've got.”

”Perhaps it's this town,” Colin said. ”I think they put something in the water.”