Catharsis

  In London the sun shone day after day. It was hot. Karen’s boyfriend Pete was found asleep in the potting shed and lost his job. He turned up at Karen’s house and introduced himself to Karen’s mother. Karen’s mother was a psychotherapist, and asked him in.

  ‘How dare you have him in the house without asking me first,’ shouted Karen, all red hair and spoilt pout, already on her way to Ray’s.

  Helga let her in. Ray and Bella and Richard were all out. Karen watched Helga wash dishes and peel potatoes and despised her.

  Ray came home and was both disconcerted and delighted to find Karen in his kitchen.

  ‘I’ve left home,’ said Karen.

  ‘You can stay here,’ said Ray. ‘Bella won’t mind. You can help Helga with the children.’

  They went upstairs. Helga clattered and crashed. Karen revealed to Ray that Bella was having an affair with Richard, an item of news she knew from an unkept confidence in her mother. Ray hit Karen, so shocked was he; Karen fell into Bella’s arms, as she returned home with Richard. Ray knocked Richard down the stairs and Karen ran shrieking from the house.

  Ray’s nose bled heartily from Bella’s blow, and she had to mop him up in the bathroom, her own eyes blurred with tears of remorse and indignation mixed. Richard rose, dazed and alone, from the floor, and gathered his belongings and prepared to leave, out into the night, wondering where he would go.

  But Bella and Ray barred his way.

  ‘Don’t go,’ said Ray. ‘We must talk everything out,’ and they led him by the hand to the kitchen, and there they sat all night, eating French bread and Brie, and drinking coffee, and more coffee, and whisky and more whisky, while tears ran and voices grew husky, and childhoods were remembered and rankling incidents recalled, and marital failures and erotic disappointments mulled over.

  Richard realised that he was a bit-part player in Ray and Bella’s drama: and he feared he had much the same rôle in Miss Martin’s life. He was her route to self-esteem, not the gratification of her desires; and in all fairness, she was his. He understood at last that Liffey, his marriage partner, was his true love, his true security, his true faithful companion and his happiness. Richard said as much. He wept. They all wept.

  Ah, what a night it was, the Night of the Confessional, of remorse and whisky and embraces and the signing of pacts and the announcement of good intentions, and as the day broke and the noise of traffic grew, and the grass of the park emerged out of dawn grey into brilliant morning green, all felt purged and re-born.

  It was only when The Times was stuffed through the letterbox, and Tony and Tina were still asleep, and the replacement kitten yowling with hunger, that it was realised that Helga had gone.

  Packed her bags and gone.

  Richard left for the office. Tina and Tony emerged startled from their bedrooms and organised their own breakfast and departure for school, and wrote their own notes apologising for their lateness, which they presented to Bella for signing. Ray took offence at this. Both children were weeping over Helga’s leaving, but neither parent showed much concern. ‘For God’s sake,’ snapped Bella. ‘Stop whining. She was only the maid. It’s not as if she was your mother.’

  Richard knew he must break off his relationship with Miss Martin. She made it easy for him.

  ‘You’re never going to marry me, are you, Richard?’ she blurted, out of her typewriter.

  Richard was startled. He could not remember her ever using his first name. She had so far avoided it, as he avoided hers. He was not even sure, come to think of it, what her first name was. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll tell your wife about us,’ said Miss Martin: her eyes were hollow and her cheeks sunk. Her figure, no longer solid and shapeless, seemed scraggy and shapeless. Her eyes were malevolent.

  Richard rang through to the Personnel Department and arranged to take its head out to lunch.

  Miss Martin was sent for by Personnel during the course of the afternoon and transferred to the Computer Room. Her replacement was a young woman with downcast eyes, a demure look and practised ways, lately transferred from the Manchester branch. Richard read invitation in the eyes, eventually raised to his over lunch—it was customary for bosses to take secretaries out to lunch on the first day of their appointment, so they could get to know each other—but steadfastly refused the invitation.

  Now he was free of Bella, Helga and Miss Martin, he would concentrate on loving Liffey. It was clear to him that the world and the people in it were not perfectable; that one person’s happiness could only be gained by the unhappiness of another; that if Liffey were to be happy, Miss Martin must be unhappy, and Bella, and Ray, and even himself. For deprived so suddenly of the sexual activity of which he had been accustomed, Richard was restless and wretched and irritable, and dissatisfied, and jealous, and very very hungry. But he bore all for the love of Liffey and in a mood of self-congratulation and sorrow mixed, and with a feeling of achievement and some kind of personal storm weathered, did he return, on that the thirty-eighth week of Liffey’s pregnancy.

  Bella, Ray, Tina and Tony went too. Bella thought Tina and Tony would benefit from a weekend in the country. Ray wondered if Liffey would be up to it, but Bella said of course she would: anyway, she, Bella would look after Liffey: she felt she had behaved badly towards her and wanted to make amends.

  It was the children’s half-term the following week and Bella thought perhaps she should leave them behind, to look after Liffey. They were really very good. Tony could help carry shopping and Tina could make beds and bread or whatever.

  Didn’t Richard think so?

  Inside Liffey (10)

  Thirty-eight weeks.

  Liffey’s baby was eighteen inches long: its weight was six pounds one ounce; it was layered nicely with subcutaneous fat. The vernix creased richly in the folds of its body. It lay head down, knees meeting wrists, ankles turning little feet towards each other, buttocks jutting out at a point just above Liffey’s umbilical cord. The baby was now almost fully mature, and had it been born into the world that day would have had a ninety per cent chance of survival. Only the lungs were not quite ready, and would have had some trouble in performing their required task, the converting of oxygen.

  Liffey herself was languorous and uncomfortable, and the normal relief expected at such a time, when the baby’s head drops into the pelvis, and the maternal organs are relieved of this untoward pressure and that, did not occur. It could not. The placenta, positioned as it was, prevented it. The baby swayed and moved, and stayed free. What yet might prove its undoing remained for the time being a blessing.

  Liffey moved slowly about the house. From time to time she breathed heavily and deeply. Every now and then her uterus contracted, painlessly, but growing taut and hard. It was a reassuring sensation, as if the body at least knew what it was doing. The contraction would last some twenty seconds and then fade away. Liffey dreamt. How she dreamt! Were they the baby’s dreams, or hers? She dreamed of strange landscapes, and of the dark, warm, busy world that was inside her. She dreamed that the baby was born: that it jumped out of her side and ran off laughing. Its hair was curly and it was aged about two. She dreamed she gave birth to a grown man and when he turned his face to look at her, it was Richard. She dreamed she gave birth to herself: that she split into cloned multitudes. She dreamed that Madge tied her feet together and forbade her to give birth at all. She dreamed that Mrs Lee-Fox shut her in the seaside cottage and the waves rose and broke against the window; and rockets flew overhead: and she escaped in a junk. But there was a kind of blank panel in the mural of all her dreams, where the face of Mabs should have appeared but never did.

  In the mornings she woke slowly, and dressed slowly, and the evenings came before the day had scarcely passed. She had very little sense of the passage of time; she functioned, yet her senses closed down around her: she saw and heard and touched the world through a dark film, as if preferring to see and hear and touch as the baby must—rocked and lulled in the dark.

  Guests

  And here they were, on Friday evening, pouring out of Richard’s car, and yes, they were real: Richard and Ray and Bella and Tony and Tina: and yes, they were chattering and laughing and looking for sleeping bags and oh, they were hungry and tired, and no, Liffey mustn’t move, not an inch, they were going to do everything, everything, only where was the tea and were there any more towels and no, Liffey, don’t move the beds, get Ray to do it—where’s Ray? Looking for flying saucers: everyone is, these days, and this is UFO country, isn’t it—and Liffey, is there any brown paper we can use for the loo; newspaper is so crude, isn’t it? And Liffey, no Liffey, sit down—just tell us where the onions are so we can make a sauce for the spaghetti—oh, in the garden—where in the garden?—ah, there—where are the plates, Liffey? Liffey is there any hot water, and Liffey, Tina’s fallen and hurt her knee on the torn mat; yes, thank you for the plasters, and I do think the mat ought to be moved—where’s Richard? Ah, taken Ray to try Tucker Pierce’s cider, how like a man, to leave everything to the womenfolk. How long, Liffey? Two weeks! Now if we can just get the table laid and the candles—where are the candles?—lit, everything will be ready by the time the men get home. Can Tony just have some cocoa and go to bed?

  That’s one dinner saved! And Tina had better have some too. They simply love the country. You’re so lucky, Liffey, right out of the rat-race, and I’m sure one gets on better with a husband for not seeing him all the time and of course Richard, as everyone knows, adores you, Liffey, and is fundamentally absolutely, totally faithful to a vision of you, Liffey. Liffey, is there any ice? I can’t seem to get it out of the tray. Most people have plastic, Liffey, not tin. Now you’re not to overtire yourself.

  Liffey, exhausted, faded back into a kind of gentle stupor. Richard came back from Cadbury Farm in a luxurious and loving mood. His arms were full of puffballs. He laid them in rows of ascending size upon the kitchen table.

  Who needs shops, when the fields are so abundant?

  Liffey waited until the guests were in bed, and Richard had made gentle, affectionate, remorseful love to her and fallen asleep, and got up and cleaned the kitchen and laid breakfast, feeling that this was the way she could best allocate her strength, and then went back to bed and propped pillows beneath her back, and slept as upright as she could manage. A light, uneasy sleep. She thought the baby did not want the visitors. But they kept Mabs away.

  In the morning Richard sliced a sharp knife into the biggest puffball, and where the cut was the flesh gaped wide, as human flesh gapes under the surgeon’s knife, and Liffey stared, aghast.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He dipped the slices of puffball into first flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs and fried them in butter. Bella and Ray and Richard ate with enthusiasm; Tina and Tony politely declined and made do with Weetabix, and Liffey fainted dead away.

  ‘Perhaps we’d better call the doctor,’ said Ray, when Liffey had been patted and coaxed awake, which took only half a minute or so.

  ‘Honestly, I’m all right,’ said Liffey.

  ‘I’d better leave Tony and Tina,’ said Bella. ‘She shouldn’t be on her own, should she.’

  ‘I don’t know why puffballs should have such an effect,’ said Richard.

  ‘It’s because of the operation,’ said Tina, softly. No one, usually, listened to Tina.

  Liffey wondered about whether or not to go to the doctor about her fainting fit, but the assembled company, now sitting in the garden in the early sun, drinking coffee, clearly did not want to get into cars and drive her anywhere so boring. Liffey, the general feeling was, was showing her hypochondria again. Pregnant women fainted; everyone knew that.

  Liffey went inside and swept floors and made beds. Tina helped, and told her about Helga, and how Helga was now working for her girlfriend’s boyfriend, making Indian sweetmeats. She had no work permit for anything other than domestic work so was earning only fifteen pounds a week but don’t tell Mummy because her visa has expired and if Mummy tells the Home Office Helga will be deported and we’ll never see her again.

  ‘Why should Bella do a thing like that?’ asked Liffey, surprised. Tina shrugged. She was a sad, sallow little girl with a round face and button eyes. She kept her eyes fixed on Liffey’s tummy.

  ‘I don’t think I want a baby,’ she said.

  Her brother Tony wandered around the garden, kicking at tufts of grass and slashing the heads off what he claimed to be weeds but were usually budding flowers. He stared at Liffey’s stomach too, but in a more prurient, less sympathetic way.

  ‘It’s because Helga’s left, I’m afraid,’ said Bella. ‘She really was an irresponsible little bitch.’

  Tony watched Liffey and Richard together, and giggled, and sniggered, as if imagining them in the act of love.

  ‘I don’t know why it is,’ complained Bella. ‘I thought if you brought children up to be open about sex, they didn’t get like that. I expect it was Helga. What a little prude she always was.’

  Ray lay in the sun and Bella rubbed his back with oil.

  ‘Do we really have to stay here two whole days?’ asked Bella. ‘I’m missing a perfectly good publishers’ party on Sunday.’

  ‘We can’t just dump the children and go,’ said Ray.

  ‘It’s not dumping,’ said Bella.

  ‘Anyway, I like it here,’ said Ray.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Bella. ‘It’s tiny, and scruffy, and fancy having to eat pork and beans at our time of life, and the beds are uncomfortable and Liffey lumbers round making everyone feel bad—she used to be such fun, do you remember?—and Richard can only talk about freeze-dried peas.’

  ‘You don’t like seeing Richard and Liffey together. You’re jealous.’

  ‘I could have Richard any time I wanted him but I don’t want him any more.’

  She didn’t either. She felt quite happy with Ray. She had forgiven him for not being her rightful husband. Anger and guilt had been purged by the confessional. She could even accept the episode of Karen as her rightful punishment for past sins. Like candyfloss in the mouth—so much abundant glory gone, melted, nothing. All she was now was bored.

  ‘Can’t we go tomorrow morning?’

  But no, Richard had accepted an invitation to Sunday lunch at Cadbury Farm.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ said Bella to Ray. ‘Now we’ll all get food poisoning. What does Richard see in those boring peasants anyway.’

  ‘They’re real people,’ said Ray, turning his mottled chest to the sun. ‘Bred out of the soil.’

  He still yearned for Karen. Karen told her friends how she had seduced Ray, and about the sorry state of his legs, and the funny mottled colour of his member, and was believed; and wherever they saw his picture at the head of his column in the Evening Gazette she and her friends laughed, and felt less powerless in the world.

  Miss Martin’s mother had a bad night with her daughter, who presently demanded to be admitted to a mental hospital. They spent a long morning waiting in the outpatients department of a psychiatric hospital, only to be told that the case did not require in-patient treatment, and that pills would do. Jeff was most supportive, but believed on balance that Miss Martin was fantasising, and feared his own liking for pornographic magazines was somehow to blame.

  While Bella oiled Ray and complained, and Liffey toiled, and Tony and Tina mourned, Richard talked to Tucker about the benefits of planting in phase with the moon. ‘Never heard of anything like that,’ said Tucker. ‘It’s part of the old knowledge,’ said Richard. ‘It’s died out here where it originated. Now the city folk have to bring it back to the countryside. Root crops are planted at the waxing of the moon: leaf crops at the wane.’

  ‘His brain’s weakened,’ Tucker complained to Mabs. ‘I hope you haven’t been giving him anything.’ ‘I’ve no quarrel with him,’ said Mabs. ‘Only with her, and that’s your fault.’

  ‘I don’t really want to go to the farm tomorrow,’ said Liffey to Richard, at tea. He was cutting open another puffball. Its rich, sweet, sickly scent stood between her and the fresh clean air her lungs demanded. She opened the window. ‘You are full of whims and fancies,’ he complained. ‘Why not now?’

  ‘Mabs frightens me,’ said Liffey.

  ‘Mabs!’ he laughed.

  ‘She kicked one of those puffballs to pieces,’ Liffey said.

  ‘Country people are superstitious about them. I don’t know why.’

  ‘She wants to harm me, Richard.’