Confessions

14

Confessions

    Peter now had a secretary of his own, a pleasant middle-aged woman called Pam Anderson, who lived in Puriri and had been terribly pleased to land an interesting job that was not quite full-time (thirty hours a week) and so enabled her to get home in time to get the tea for her husband and two younger sons, one working but still at home, and the other in his Seventh-Form year at school. Since she had been chosen jointly by Marianne and Peter, there was no fear that she wouldn’t know her job, and in fact she was proving both extremely capable and very likeable.

    For once Peter’s door was closed—he was brooding over a paper Hamish had written for the J.P.A.P.S., wondering how to point out tactfully to its creator that its introductory paragraphs, though perfectly coherent and logical, could do with a bit of re-writing in order to get the piece off to a more interesting start. Pam, who called everyone under thirty “dear” regardless of sex, marital status, or academic standing, said to the little dark-haired student: “He is expecting you, dear: just knock.”

    Mirry duly knocked, and Peter called “Come in!”

    “Ah, yes: Ms Field; come in and sit down, moy dear.” A certain formality prevailed within the university between teachers and students up to and including Masters level—after that everybody called everybody else by their Christian names. Peter himself would have preferred to drop this custom—certainly with the Honours students—but he knew that Hamish preferred to maintain the more formal approach. He looked kindly at pretty little Mirry Field, whose work he’d been supervising for nearly a term, now, and noted with concern the shadows under her eyes. He pressed his intercom button.

    “Yes, Dr Riabouchinsky?” said Pam, who maintained formality over the intercom, but not at most other times.

    “Pam, moy dear, could I ask you to bring me—one moment. –You loike tea?” he said to Mirry. Going pink, she said that tea’d be lovely, thank you, Dr Riabouchinsky.—“Tea, please, Pam.”

    When it came it wasn’t just two mugs of tea, but a proper tray, supporting an embroidered tray-cloth that Pam had brought from home—an index of her approval of her new boss—a teapot, a jug of hot water, a tiny milk jug, a sugar bowl, two pretty cups and saucers (from the Institute’s set, selected by Marianne) and a saucer of very thin lemon slices.

    Peter had maintained a flow of gentle chat on indifferent topics while they waited for the tea. Now he twinkled at Mirry, and said: “I will be mother—da?”

    “Yes,” she agreed faintly. No-one in the History Department had ever offered her tea; in fact no-one there had treated her as anything but a brain which might have had two legs attached in order to carry it into the History Department, but was otherwise totally sexless and without a personal life of its own or, indeed, any human characteristics.

    Pam had learned to close the door when Peter had a student with him, so they were perfectly private. Peter served her tea. Mirry was very glad to be offered lemon, because in spite of having been brought up on a hill-country farm, she had a natural loathing of the very strong, very milky tea that her parents swilled (her word) with monotonous regularity every day of their lives. When she was sipping it, and starting to look a bit more relaxed, he said: “I have read your paper, moy dear, and I am very pleased with it.

    “Oh!” said Mirry, going pink with relief and pleasure.

    “Da; so we put that asoide for the moment—okay? And instead we talk a little about you.”

    “Me?” said Mirry in a squeaky voice.

    “Mm-hm.” He twinkled at her, and added: “I know that is not the custom in the History Department, but you are enrolled with us, now, moy dear, and we do not loike to see our Honours students going round with big blue stains under their eyes only at the end of their first term.” Mirry went scarlet and drank more tea without looking at him. Peter added kindly, on a teasing note: “Especially when we have invested our money in them and are hoping they will justifoy their Student Assistantship!”

    “Oh,” said Mirry faintly, putting her teacup down in its saucer with a definite rattle.

    Peter got up from behind his desk, came round to the front of it and pulled up the elderly armchair that he kept there for this purpose. He took Mirry’s cup and saucer gently from her hand and put them on the desk.

     “I do not h’wish to proy, moy dear; but if it is anything you could tell me about...?”

    “No,” said Mirry in a strangled voice, twisting her hands in her lap.

    “You are working too hard? Studying too late at noight?”

    “No; I—I do work three nights a week at a restaurant—but—but...”

    “Your academic work is excellent,” he said gently. “There is no need to push yourself, there.”

    “No; I don’t think I am...” She looked up at him and said earnestly: “I enjoy it—honestly!”

    “Good,” said Peter. He looked at her little flushed face and involuntarily thought that she was just the sort of pretty little dark thing that baby Sharon would grow up to be and, without debating the wisdom of the matter, or wondering if he was encroaching on her personal space, or anything of the sort which would undoubtedly have prevented his Anglo-Saxon colleagues from making the same move, put his warm, strong hand gently over the little girl’s tense hands and said quietly: “And you cannot tell old Peter what is troubling you?”

    “No!” said Mirry on a strangled sob. She began to cry. Instead of sitting back and letting her do so, Peter left one hand on her clenched ones, put the other on her shoulder, and leaning forward in his battered armchair, drew her gently against his broad shoulder. Mirry resisted at first, but gave in all of a sudden, and sobbed against his chest. Peter patted her back gently. When the sobs had abated, he said softly: “There, moy poor little one;”—in very much the tone he used with baby Sharon when she was crying with a tooth.

    “I’m—sorry!” gasped Mirry.

    “Hush; there is no need to be sorry; I am just a sentimental old Russian Jew, and I know all about what it is to be lonely and unhappy.”

    Not surprisingly, Mirry burst into tears all over again.

    When this lot of tears had dried up, he gave her his handkerchief but still held her firmly against his chest. Mirry sniffed and blew, and, since Peter was really very strong, remained perforce against his broad chest, dimly perceiving that he was very warm and had a very nice smell (which she was too upset and in any case too unsophisticated to analyse correctly as a mixture of very expensive eau-de-Cologne soap and its matching Kölnigwasser, his tweed jacket, and Peter himself).

    “It is perhaps a boy?” said Peter delicately. “One of your fellow students, hein?”

    “No,” said the honest Mirry.

    “And you cannot tell me about it?”—She shook her head.—“No. In that case, moy little one, I think I tell you a story. Once upon a toime, about two years ago now, there was a fat old Russian Jew who went to a restaurant on a Saturday noight...”

    When he’d finished and gently realised her, Mirry said: “Oh.”

    “I am not wrong, I think?”

    “No,” she said huskily. “That was me. We—we had a—a thing last year.” She gave him a defiant look. “I suppose you think I’m awful!”

    “No,” said Peter tranquilly and truthfully. “I do not think that at all; I think it was perfectly natural. Hamish is a very attractive man—I do not think that many girls of your age would resist him for long, if he indicated that he wanted them.”

    Mirry had jumped at this mention of her lover’s name; at the conclusion of the little speech she said, in a very small voice: “Oh.”

    “Besoides,” Peter continued calmly, “he has, I think, been very unhappy in his marriage for a long toime, now.”

    “Yes,” said Mirry huskily.

    “You know that his woife has gone back to Scotland?”

    “Yes; Polly told me,” said Mirry, not pausing to think that Peter might not have any idea who “Polly” was.

    It wasn’t at all a common name. “Polly Carrano?” he said cautiously.

    Mirry sniffed, blew her nose again and said: “Yes; she’s my cousin.”

    “So-o; she is his cousin, too—no?”—Mirry nodded.—“You are related, then?”

    “Yes: he’s my second cousin,” said Mirry gruffly.

    “Ah,” said Peter thoughtfully.

    Mirry, who had never voiced this dark fear to anyone before, including Hamish, said hoarsely: “Do—do you think that’s immoral, or something?”

    “No; I know several pairs of second cousins who are married,” he returned tranquilly. He observed with interest Mirry’s little jump at the magic word “married”, and added: “And Hamish broke it off?”

    “No—I did.”

    He looked at her thoughtfully. “You were not toired of him, moy dear?”

    She turned scarlet again and shook her head.

    Peter hadn’t thought so: no. He went on looking at her thoughtfully. He knew Hamish Macdonald fairly well, now, and in any case was well acquainted with the type. Mirry licked her lips nervously; she looked at him, quite obviously unaware she was doing so, with a hopeful expression.

    “You permit old Peter tells you something—da?”

    She nodded convulsively.

    “When a man of—shall we say, a certain age—falls in love with a very much younger woman”—Mirry went scarlet yet again but continued to look him bravely in the face—“and, especially, I think, when he is at heart a very puritanical man who has forced himself not to have extra-marital affaires in the past, however much he may have h’wished to… Well, when a man of that toype has an affaire with a much younger woman, he will often not think very much about what he is doing—for two main reasons, I think.”

    Mirry’s slanted dark eyes were fixed on his face. Peter’s curly mouth quivered into a very gentle smile; he said softly: “The first reason is, perhaps, something that a younger person moight foind it a little hard to grasp: an older man, who foinds himself swept away boy a consuming passion”—here Mirry blushed all over again—“will often be quoite incapable of thinking rationally at all about his actions; I do not h’wish to be crude, but I think the expression is something loike ‘thinking with what is below his waist’—no?”

    She nodded, looking both embarrassed and a little bewildered.

    Peter saw that, indeed, she didn’t understand, and said gently: “To have a very passionate sexual relationship at such an age, when one has repressed one’s nature for so long, can be very shattering for a man; this is something you h’yave not perhaps thought of before, moy dear?”

    “No,” said Mirry huskily.

    “He has a temper, too; he is a very passionate man, I think.”

    It wasn’t quite a question, but Mirry said emphatically: “Yes, very!”

    “Mm—so that is the first reason whoy he has not, perhaps, thought about the implications of your relationship in the way you moight have expected him to, moy dear.”

    “Yes; I see,” said Mirry huskily.

    “And the second reason,” said Peter, who never, except when he had lost his own temper, or was otherwise carried away by passion, lost his thread: “is that—well, when a person who has not had very much in his loife suddenly foinds something that is very, very precious to him, he is often afraid to—how shall I put it?—to take it out and look at it too closely, for fear it moight all fall apart in his hands if he does.”

    “I—I don’t quite understand,” murmured Mirry.

    Peter pursed his curly mouth. “Hmm…  I will troy to give you an analogy... Da! One could compare it with a choild that had just been given a very special toy that it did not expect to get; perhaps a very special dolly—da?” He put his head on one side again and looked very, very kindly at the little female figure before him, in its silly sloppy pink sweater that hid most of its neat little shape, and with its hair, as usual, pulled up to one side of its head in a cute but very silly plait, tied up with a pink bow.

    “I think I see what you mean,” said Mirry slowly. “Like—like when Dad gave me Blackie.”

    “Yes?”

    “Blackie was my dog, when I was little,” explained Mirry, blissfully unaware that to fiftyish male lecturers with distinct M.C.P. tendencies, she still was little.

    “And you felt loike that—loike I have descroibed?”

    “Mm; at first Dad thought I didn’t like him; but it wasn’t that...” She beamed at him suddenly. “Yes—it was just like that!”

    “Yes; and you see, moy dear, I am thinking perhaps maybe that is how our poor Hamish was feelink about you,” said Peter, not dealing with his English terribly well in his emotion.

    A slow wave of red rode up the slender neck and flooded the heart-shaped face. “Um, I suh-said— He must’ve thought that I—that I didn’t want him any more!” she gulped.

    “He has not said a word about it to me; but nevertheless I think that is probably what he did think.” Mirry looked at him in horror. Peter added simply: “He has been so very unhappy, for months.”

    “I only said,” she said in a small voice, “that I thought we ought to cool it, because it wasn’t going anywhere.”

    “I see; but of course he would not have grasped that you in fact desoired the relationship should go somewhere.”

    Mirry said nothing.

    After a moment Peter suggested: “Perhaps you could troy to talk to him about it?”

    “He—he was very angry; and—and I lost my temper and—and hung up on him.”

    “I think he will have got over his anger boy now—no?”

    “Maybe. Only—only with his wuh-wife going off to Scotland; I—I thought...”

    “He would not come to you, moy dear, if he thought you did not want him; he has too much proide to beg.”

    “Yes; he’s awfully proud,” agreed Mirry miserably.

    “So; it is up to you, I think?” He held his head on one side and smiled his nice smile.

    “Yes.”

    Peter watched with considerable satisfaction as the sweetly bowed mouth firmed. In another country he would have given her a kiss, or more probably a kiss on each cheek, and perhaps a hug; as it was he merely said: “Now, moy dear, perhaps you pop down to the Ladies and wash your face—mm? And then we have a noice talk about your paper—da?”

    “Yes; thank you,” whispered Mirry, standing up.

    Peter accompanied her through Pam’s office to with his arm gently about her shoulders. When she’d trotted down the corridor he said: “Pam, moy dear—if it is not too much trouble—a fresh relay of tea?”

    “Is everything all right, Peter?” replied Pam, getting up.

    “Yes; everythink is, I think, quoite all roight, now.”

    “Good,” said Pam simply, going into his office and retrieving the tray. “Would you like some chocolate biscuits?”

    “Chocolate biscuits would be most appropriate at this juncture. Yes, thank you very much, Pam.”

    Involuntarily Pam Anderson reflected that he was a real sweetie, but he came out with some awfully funny remarks, at times!

    “The fact is, Don,” said Larry McGrath brutally: “ya fancy the girl dead rotten.”

    “I do not!” retorted Donald Freeman, going scarlet.

    Larry picked up a cream doughnut—they were in a coffee bar in Puriri, indulging themselves in a reversion to the diet of their adolescence—took a huge bite, chewed vigorously, and said in a muffled voice: “Yes, ya do—written all over you.” He swallowed, grinned, and added: “And if ya don’t fancy ’er dead rotten, what the Hell were ya doing with a hard-on in that bloody office with just the three of us there?”

    “Shut up!” said Donald in a shaking voice that sounded as if it was about to burst into tears at any minute. He picked up his coffee cup with a trembling hand and buried his nose in his espresso.

    Larry, who’d decided that if he was going to make a pig of himself he might as well do it properly, sipped his own cappuccino, licked froth and cinnamon off his well-shaped upper lip and said thoughtfully: “Great tits.”

    “Shut UP!” said Donald, going scarlet again.

    “Aw, come on, Don!” He took another huge bite of cream doughnut, licked cream and icing sugar off his hand, and chewed vigorously.

    Not looking at him, Donald said sulkily: “So what if I do?”

    Larry swallowed, and replied: “Well, you oughta do something about it, mate—ask her out or something.”

    “She wouldn’t go out with me,” said Donald, sulkier than ever. “She—she thinks l—she thinks I’m...”

    “A tit,” said Larry cheerfully. “Yeah, l noticed that.”

    “Then what the Hell are you talking about?” cried Donald in justified exasperation.

    Larry gulped cappuccino. “Got nothing to do with it.”

    “What hasn’t?”

    “Fact she thinks you’re a tit. Y’are, anyway; only a tit would’ve suggested ducting the heating up that—”

    “For Christ’s sake shut up about it!” cried Donald.

    “Anyway,” said Larry. He stuffed the last of his doughnut into his mouth and said something indistinguishable through it.

    “What?” said Donald sulkily.

    Larry swallowed noisily, siphoned the last of his cappuccino into his mouth with a noise like an efficient vacuum cleaner, swished it round his mouth with a noise like an ageing washing machine in order to dislodge the gluey remains of the doughnut, and swallowed again—noisily. Donald was so used to him that he didn’t even notice this performance.

    “I said it doesn’t matter a damn that she thinks you’re a tit; point is, does she fancy you?”

    Donald took a bite of his own, half-finished doughnut, and swallowed. “No,” he said sulkily.

    “You don’t know that, Don,” said Larry with heavy patience.

    Donald scowled. “Yes, I do—she’s one of those bloody Woman’s Libbers, or something—she can’t stand me!”

    “Jesus, Don!” said Larry, rapidly losing patience.

    Donald ate doughnut sulkily.

    “Ya really don’t know a thing about women, do ya?” He bent forward over the little yellow Formica table, a feature of The Primrose Café, and said earnestly: “Listen! It doesn’t matter a damn if she thinks you’re a tit, or she fancies herself as a Women’s Libber, or any of that crap! What matters is whether ya make her hot between the legs, mate!”

    Reddening, Donald replied crossly: “Well I don’t, so there! Anyone can see she can’t stand the sight of me—it sticks out a mile!”

    Larry gave a coarse laugh. “Well, something was sticking out a mile, mate—but it wasn’t that!”

    Donald, at twenty-eight going on twenty-nine, could hardly tell his best friend that he was horrible, as he would have done when they were thirteen. His lower lip trembled; he picked resentfully at the remains of his doughnut.

    “So why don’tcha?”

    “What?”

    “Ask—her—out,” said Larry with awful patience.

    Donald’s sherry-coloured eyes filled with tears. He blinked hard and said in a stifled voice: “I told you; she— I’m not her type— Look, drop it, Larry!” He propped his right elbow on the little yellow table and abruptly hid his face in his hand.

    Larry was horribly taken aback by this sudden introduction of the super-emotional. He swallowed hard and turned puce. After an excruciating period of silent embarrassment he croaked: “You’re not— I mean, you are quite attractive, Don—to girls, I mean!”

    Donald did not look up.

    “Nothing wrong with you,” persisted Larry hoarsely, breaking out in a sweat—admittedly The Primrose Café was rather over-heated, for early May.

    Donald still didn’t look up.

    “Don,” said Larry hoarsely, “I can’t ask her for you!” He gave an unconvincing laugh.

    “No,” said Donald in a small voice.

    Larry swallowed hard again. “You’ve gotta— I mean... It’s your life, old mate! I mean...”

    “Yes,” said Donald after a while.

    Larry gave a long sigh. After quite some time he said with forced heartiness: “Well, better be making a move, I s’pose!”

    Donald got silently to his feet.

    Amy Martin who ran The Primrose Café observed their departure with considerable satisfaction; she had in fact been glaring at them from behind the coffee machine for some time, but they hadn’t noticed. “Go and clear that table, Gayle!” she said sharply to her crumpled little waitress. Gayle, who unlike her boss had no objection whatsoever to handsome, well-dressed young city gents in suits who came in and monopolized the place for the best part of the afternoon, came out of a warm daze with a jump, and clopped over in her unsuitably high heels to do so.

    Out in the street Larry laid his warm, broad hand casually on Donald’s thin shoulder; further than this he could not, of course, go.

    After a moment Donald shook it off crossly and marched off quickly to where Larry had parked the Porsche. Larry sighed heavily, shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, and mooched after him slowly, brooding on Don’s lack of self-confidence and on the visible and, to his eye, anyway, visibly begging-for-it attractions of Caro Webber.

    Peter’s phone rang at two-thirty in the afternoon. He had been reading an article in French and was miles away. “Allô—oui? J’écoute.”

    There was a sort of gulp and a gasp at the other end of the line. Peter came to himself with a start and said: “Riabouchinsky here.”

    “Peter,” said his wife’s barely recognizable voice, “can you—” She gave a terrific snort and began to sob into the phone.

    “What is it?” cried Peter.

    “Peter—I can’t—please—!” she sobbed.

    “Are you all roight? Is the baby all roight?”

    “Yes!” gasped Veronica. “We’re both okay!” She gave another sob.

    “Then what is it, moy darling? Not Jerry?”

    “No!” wailed Veronica. “It’s nothing like that! I just—can’t—cope!” she gulped. “Cuh-can you come home, Peter?

    “I come at once. All roight?”

    “Yes!” hiccupped Veronica. “The—the bluh-bloody washing machine—”

    “Never moind the bloody washink machine; it can flood the verdammt flat for all I care! Just wait there for me—da?”

    “Yes!” she sobbed.

    “I come now,” said Peter, and hung up on another sob.

    Pam had the afternoon off, as it was the first week of the May holidays. Peter stuck his head round Marianne’s door, said: “Marianne: I go home now,” and was off before she could react.

    He took half the time between Puriri and the city that it had taken Charlie Roddenberry on his first cautious trip up to the Hibiscus Coast. Fortunately there were no cops in sight and the roads were very quiet at that time of day—well, there was one cop but he was down a side road just lighting up his first cigarette after a week of trying to kid himself he’d given up. He drew in the smoke and nicotine ecstatically and cast a purely admiring glance at the pale yellow Merc as it whistled past the end of the street.

    At home Peter found his wife sitting in a crumpled, damp heap on his fawn carpet by the phone. Sharon was howling in her playpen, and from the direction of the kitchen came an ominous thumping sound which was presumably the washing machine gone berserk.

    Promptly Veronica burst into tears again. “Puh-Peter!”

    “Hush, moy darling.” He knelt beside her and took the receiver gently from her damp hand.

    “Don’t—be—cross!” sobbed Veronica.

    “I’m not cross,” said Peter, gathering her into his arms.

    Veronica sobbed against his broad chest for quite some time.

    “So,” he said gently at last. “Now you admit you need this silly old man of yours, no?”

    Veronica put her arms around him and hugged him very tightly. After a while she muttered something that sounded like: “The baby—”

    “She is in a very bad temper,” said Peter tranquilly. “Perhaps it is another tooth—da?”

    “I’ve tried everything! I’ve changed her, and given her a bottle and—and—walked her up and down and—”

    “Hush.”

    “She just won’t stop crying!” said Veronica on a gulp.

    “No; we will just let her croy for a little longer, moy dearest,” he said calmly above Sharon’s roars.

    “I dunno what to do!”

    “Hush, moy darling; do not upset yourself.”

    “And I feel so bluh-bloody!” wailed Veronica, making a clean breast of it.

    “Yes, of course you do, moy angel; it is the naughty baby in your tummy that naughty Peter put there—n’est-ce pas?”

    Instead of telling him to drop the sexist drivel, not to say the fatuous baby-talk, Veronica hugged him even tighter.

    Peter dropped a kiss on her dampish blonde head. “First we put this poor Little Mother to bed with a hottie and a noice cup of tea—da? Then I see to Sharon and the naughty washink machine.”

    Veronica gulped. “The bloody thing’s gone berserk!”

    “Yes, I can hear that,” replied Peter calmly.

    “It sprayed water everywhere!” she said earnestly, looking up into his face with drowned forget-me-not eyes.

    Peter kissed her red nose.

    “I thought I could cope!” said Veronica, starting to weep again.

    “Ssh; hush, moy darling; we are none of us super-human; and Heaven forbid you should be;”—he put a hand under her chin and began to mop her face with his handkerchief, twinkling gently—“otherwoise what would there be left for this poor fool to do for you?”

    Her face went scarlet. “I love you so much!”

    “Yes, moy dearest woife; and I love you; and now you will come and have a noice loie-down—da?”

    He drew her gently to her feet and led her into the bedroom, where, since her clothes were soaked, presumably by the washing machine, he undressed her, rubbed her down briskly with a hard towel, put her into her old pale-blue candlewick dressing-gown, and got her into bed.

    Switching on the electric blanket, he said: “And now I go to make you a hottie for your tummy, and a noice cup of tea—da?”

    “Da,” agreed Veronica faintly. “Thanks.”

    Peter’s curly mouth twitched and his shoulders shook slightly, but Veronica didn’t see this further evidence of her husband’s M.C.P. tendencies, as she’d closed her eyes.

    In the kitchen he dealt with the washing machine by turning it off at the wall; it stopped with an awful graunching noise, so there was undoubtedly something very wrong with it. There was a flood on the floor, with several bath towels sitting wetly in it at scattered intervals. He ignored this for the nonce, filled Veronica’s hottie from the hot tap, and put the kettle on for a cup of tea.

    Only after he’d given Veronica the hottie did he pick up the now purple Sharon. She gave an abrupt gulp and turned the roars off like turning off a tap.

    Peter said something very severe to her in Russian but Sharon ignored this, and let herself bathe in the familiar warmth of his arms. He carried her into the kitchen and made the tea one-handed.

    When Veronica had drunk a cup of the milky brew he knew she preferred, she drew a deep breath and said: “I’m sorry, Peter!”

    “If you tell me once again you are sorry,” replied Peter tranquilly, “I shall be forced to forget moy feminist principles and put you over moy knee.”

    She gulped, and gave a shaky laugh.

    “That’s better!” he said, jigging Sharon up and down a bit.

    “I swore I wouldn’t do the weepy little wife bit.”

    “I know; but it is actually very borink being married to Superwoman.”

     Veronica gave an involuntary snort of laughter.

    “That’s better,” he repeated, sitting down on the edge of the bed, settling Sharon on his thigh and patting his wife’s knee gently; “and now I think, perhaps maybe we get a nanny to look after this naughty little one whoile Mother gets on with her work.”

    “Been a tit,” replied Veronica obliquely.

    “No, you have just troied to do too many new things at once,” he returned simply.

    “Yeah,” she admitted with a sigh.

    Peter kissed Sharon’s curls for a bit.

    “S’pose she stopped howling the minute ya picked her up.”

    “Mm-hm.”‘

    “Man-mad,” said Sharon’s adoptive mother, looking at her with a jaundiced eye.

    “No-o,” said Peter in a soppy voice: “she is just mad about her Uncle Peter—loike her Aunty Veronica is—aren’t you, moy precious little Sharon?”

    Sharon returned enthusiastically: “Pee-Pee!” and grabbed his nose.

    “Ow!” said Peter.

    “Serves ya right!” said his wife, laughing like a drain.

    Sharon gave a shattering yawn.

    “Yes, naughty one,” said Peter severely; “you have croied yourself into exhaustion, have you not?”

    “I love the way you say that,” said Veronica sleepily.

    “What?” he asked in surprize, investigating Sharon’s nappy and finding that it was quite dry.

    “Hegg-zshawss-chee-on,” quoted Veronica with difficulty. “No; that’s not it.”

    “I do not think I say it differently from anybody else?” said Peter doubtfully.

    “Yes, you do; just a bit.” She gave a shattering yawn.

    Peter laughed and said to Sharon: “I think maybe someone else has croied herself into exhaustion, too—tu trouves pas?”

    “There ya go again,” said Veronica, closing her eyes.

    Peter put Sharon in her carrycot with a kiss—since there wasn’t very much room in the fawnish bedroom they hadn’t bothered with a cot—and bent to kiss his wife.

    They both slept until dinnertime, during which period Peter mopped the kitchen floor with his perfectly good sponge-mop, wondering as he did so why women always hurled towels at floods instead of turning off the flood at its source and finding the mop and bucket—he had, in his long and varied experience, encountered this phenomenon before; rang a large appliance store and informed the startled ear at the other end of the phone that he wanted a large automatic washing machine—no, he didn’t care what model or colour, just a big one, and he didn’t care about the price, and please would they come and take away the dead one—and rang Belinda Cohen.

    Belinda laughed and said: “Thank goodness! I thought she was going to hang out until it killed both of you!”

    “So did I,” agreed Peter, with a rueful chuckle.

    “The sooner you get into the new house the better,” Belinda added thoughtfully. “That flat is really too small; Veronica has always needed space around her.”

    Since his once-neat sitting-room was occupied by mountains of papers, books and files, all of which related to Veronica’s current research project, and all of which he was forbidden to touch because she knew exactly where everything was, Peter agreed with that, too.

    “How’s the house coming along?” Belinda asked cautiously.

    He sighed. “Well, the roof is fixed; and the plasterers have almost finished upstairs; but the kitchen is quoite unspeakable: they have ripp-èd out the cupboards but that is all so far.”

    “And the wiring?” –It had all had to be replaced.

    “That is done; that very pleasant young man, Tim Green, he is an excellent workman.” He sighed. “I just wish the rest of them were half as efficient.”

    “Mm... If you wouldn’t mind, Peter, dear, I know Jerry would be very glad to do what he can.”

    “I would be very grateful, on the contrary, Belinda,” he replied immediately with his usual good manners; and, as far as she could tell, meaning it.

    “I’ll see if he can put a bomb under them.”

    Peter smiled at this remark coming from Lady Cohen; but Sir Jerry evidently did put a bomb under them, or something equally drastic, for an army of workmen from Cohen Construction descended on the house the very next day, and within a month, although the staircase was still the ghastly dull green, and the downstairs panelling and fireplaces were still missing, the place was habitable.

    Peter made Veronica eat her dinner in bed that night, although she declared firmly that she felt perfectly fit again. Although she then decided that she could fancy a coffee, she was asleep when he brought it in to her.

    Veronica woke at about half-past one and got very cautiously out of bed to go for a pee, without switching the light on. But of course he was awake when she came back.

    “Sorry I woke you up,” she growled.

    “No; do not be sorry.” He snuggled his head into her bosom. “Mm… Whoy do you have this funny dressing-gown on?

     “Dunno. Uh—you put it on me, didn’tcha?

    “So I did,” he said, fumbling it open and pressing himself against her.

    Veronica put her arms round him.

    After a while he said cautiously: “Are you asleep?”

    “No.”

    “Good. There is somethink I wish to tell you.”

    “Is it important?  asked Veronica sleepily.

    “Yes, very important.”

    “Go on, then,”  she said in a puzzled voice.

    “Please you will not say anythink?”

    “All right.” Her heart started to thump uncomfortably, and she began to imagine all sorts of frightful things.

    “When I was a young man—” he broke off. “Please hug me, Véronique.”

    Veronica hugged him. Peter began to cry, very softly.

    After a while she said: “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.

    “I want to—but…”

    Veronica kissed his bald spot and tried to think of something to say that would sound encouraging but not prying. She couldn’t think of anything.

    “I was married,” he said abruptly into her bosom.

    Veronica didn’t say anything.

    He sighed. “We were children: I was only twenty; and she was eighteen. I was in Israel, boy then: moy grandparents had died a few years earlier, and moy last old cousin in France doied, you see?”

    “Mm.”

    He swallowed and said with difficulty: “She was pregnant. If it was a boy… Moshe.”

    “Mm.

    “I was in the Army, of course; I think what you call military service, no?”

    “Yes.”

    There was a long silence. Veronica didn’t dare to say anything—not that she could think of anything to say.

    “It was when I— I forget the word; I patrol where the—the edge of the country.”

    “I geddit.”

    “She—Esther—she visit her brother and his woife, they are—I do not know an English word—kibbutzim: they live on a kibbutz, you know what that is?”

    “Yes, sure.”

    Peter swallowed. “Sometoimes I don’t know when to explain or— Your experience is so different from moine, Veronica.”

    “Yeah. It’s all right.”

    “Everyone on the kibbutz is killed by the Arabs—Palestinian terrorists, one would say these days.”

    “Everyone—oh, God!”

    He swallowed. “So when I come back from—from to patrol, they are both gone.”

    Above his head Veronica made a ferocious face, to no effect: tears rolled slowly down her cheeks.

    Peter was silent; after a while he said cautiously: “Veronica?”

    Veronica hugged him convulsively. “I’m awfully sorry, Peter.”

    Peter’s body was very tense; suddenly his hands tightened fiercely on her back and he began to sob.

    “Ssh, darling; ssh, Peter, ssh.”

    He cried for a long time; Veronica repressed her own sobs but the tears rolled silently down her cheeks

    Finally he sighed, and said: “That is it.”

    “Yes,” said Veronica in a choked voice.

    “It is a very long toime ago, now; but I wish you to know.”

    “Mm.” After a moment she added gruffly: “Thanks for telling me.”

    After quite some he said against her, in a gritty sort of voice that she hardly recognized: “I wish to be in you.”

    “Yes,” replied Veronica simply.

    “I cannot do it fancy—I’m sorry.”

    “I don’t mind: go on.”

    He did go on: he simply got on top of her, shoved it up there, and climaxed into her, groaning, with tears running down his cheeks.

    Just when Veronica was thinking she'd have to tell him to move, she couldn’t breathe, he rolled off her, snuggled into her boobs, and fell fast asleep.

    If Peter could have seen Veronica’s face, which of course he couldn’t, he would have seen a very odd little smile on it.

    “Sometimes,” she said thoughtfully to Polly Carrano, out on the Carranos’ patio in a pleasant patch of May sunshine, “they expect you to be their mother, eh?”

    “Yep,” replied Polly calmly. “When they’re not doing the macho shit—too right.” She eyed the jug of iced orange and apple juice moodily. “Wish I was allowed to drink rum.”

    Veronica had been about to refute the “macho shit” bit: Peter wasn’t in the least like the macho Jake Carrano. She sighed. “Yeah… Is that that muck the DSIR have zapped with their little ray-guns—apple juice pretending to be something else?”

    “No. It’s supposed to be unzapped pure apple juice, plus some orange juice that’s probably reconstituted Florida muck, but I’ve stopped reading he bloody labels, there nothing to choose between them.”

    “True,” agreed Veronica in a vague voice. “Actually, you’re right about the macho shit,” she admitted.

    “Mm. It’s hormonal pre-programming: they can't help it, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I decided a while back that I’d just have to get used to being Woman, capital W, for at least fifty percent of the rest of my life, alongside being me. A person, I mean,” she elaborated.

    Veronica thought about it. “You’re right, by gum,” she discovered in some awe.

    “Yeah. Fancy a coffee?”

    “He’s been trying to wean me off that, too… The Hell with it! The kid can be born with a caffeine addiction! Thanks, Polly.”

    … “And be warned,” warned Polly, coming back with the coffee-pot and assorted crockery on a tray.

    Veronica jumped; she’d just about dozed off. “What?”

    “When you actually have the kid, he may well go to pieces.”

    She swallowed. After a moment she croaked: “Did Jake?”

    “Hell, yes!” Polly set the tray down carefully and sat down. “Panic stations from here to Christmas after next. So there you are,” she concluded. “Want sugar?”

    “Loads.”

    “So do I.” She stirred busily. “Black or white?”

    “Black, ta. I never wanna lay eyes on flaming milk, on flaming muesli or not, as long as I live!”

    “Me, too.”

    The matrons drank well-sugared strong black coffee defiantly, Polly Carrano for one reflecting that whether they were defying their husbands, or God (He was a man, too, natch), or biology, or the Universe itself, would have been quite impossible to say.

Next chapter:

https://themembersoftheinstitute.blogspot.com/2023/01/mirry-in-charge.html