LITMIR.BIZ

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I know.’

      ‘How can you be so boorish?’

      ‘For Christ’s sake.’

      ‘Listen to yourself.’

      ‘You should never’ve married me. You know that? You should’ve hired a husband from Moss Bros.’

      ‘Will you never learn to be just a little nicer to people?’

      ‘Every night I pray for God to make me a normal healthy sycophant.’

      ‘I think you do it to spite yourself,’ Allison went on round the corner of his last remark. At such times, she spoke in spasmodic monologue, treating anything Cameron said like an incidental noise that merely prevented her from being heard for the moment. ‘I think it’s because you’ve given up. You’ve accepted failure. So you snipe at everybody else. You don’t care what they think of you. It won’t be any less than you think of yourself.’

      Cameron suddenly realised how quietly they had been speaking. It was amazing when you thought of it. He took time off to ponder the fact, like a galley slave listening aesthetically to the sound the oars made in the water. There was something almost admirable about the skill with which they administered discreet mouthfuls of poison to each other. They were moving back and forth in the kitchen, neatly side-stepping, lifting and laying dishes, and at the same time deftly knocking nails into each other with velvet hammers, while their children were able to dream undisturbed a few feet away. It deserved some kind of award, Cameron reflected. Say, a certificate from the Institute of Masochists.

      ‘You can never make any prolonged attempt to be just a little better than you are. Your stamina always runs out. And you fall back on being nasty. It’s so much easier.’

      Cameron stacked away the coffee-dishes and returned the leftovers to their respective tins. He became aware sadly that he knew where everything went. Everything in this house had its place, including him. He was labelled indelibly and it was too late to change his destination. He collected two teacups that had strayed from a previous meal and hung them up on their hooks beside the others. The completed row of cups glittered with malice. They waited, along with the biscuittins and the paper-rack and the aspirin-bottle, to measure out his life for him. The future came up before him like a fantastic conundrum. How many cups of tea? How many headaches? How many strokes of the brush across his teeth? For what? He seemed caught in a million measurements of his transient futility. Tubes of toothpaste. Rusting razor-blades. Hair-cuts. Nail-parings. Wearing heels, recording a loss that couldn’t be recouped with leather. And Allison’s voice, patient as a river, eroding him.

      ‘You’ve always been the same. If I hadn’t pushed you, we’d never have got anywhere.’

      She was laying the table for breakfast. She did it swiftly and expertly, as she had done it countless times before. Cameron watched the pattern of the four set places emerge on the formica tabletop like a coat-of-arms he could never disown. He wanted to sweep the dishes onto the floor. But he noticed the small pools of water left on the draining-board by the crockery and his hand wiped them with the sponge, locking him into a small necessity. And when that was finished there would be another, and then another, each small necessity opening into another, endlessly.

      ‘Put out the light when you come through,’ Allison said.

      She put off the gas at the main. That’s right, Cameron thought. Keep us safe from other harms. Never be hurt by anything but me. And I’ll save all my blood for you. Allison checked off the kitchen with her eyes and went through to the living-room.

      Cameron lingered on a moment. He filled a glass with water, drank, and spat into the sink. His mouth still felt scummed. Putting out the light, he walked through to the living-room, where Allison stood, waiting patiently.

      As soon as he came in, she started to undress, draping her clothes over the chair that tradition had made hers. The moment he pokered the fire she spoke, as if he had inaugurated the next phase of a ritual.

      ‘When are you going to see about the gas-fire, by the way?’

      ‘I already have.’

      ‘So where is it?’

      ‘Look. You can stuff the domestic catechism. You know damn well. They can’t supply the one you want. Remember?’

      ‘But when will they?’

      ‘We’ll have to wait. They’ll install one when they have them in stock.’

      ‘But you haven’t even been back in to see them. Of course, you’d rather have a coal-fire anyway.’

      ‘That’s right. I prefer the naked flame. Me and the cavemen both. I’m a primitive.’

      He was undressing too now, and he padded through to their room in his stockinged feet and fetched his pyjamas and her nightdress.

      ‘It’s nothing so romantic,’ she said. ‘You’re just lazy. Look at that last place we were in. I was never as glad to get out of anywhere. Nothing worked. The toilet only flushed when it took the notion. Half the doors didn’t shut properly. But you were quite happy with it.’

      ‘I like houses that are humanised with flaws. Anyway, it’s too late at night. Don’t go into your Rosetta stone routine just now. Fragments of pre-history.’

      Cameron stood stripped to the waist, contemplating his stomach. It had softened, though not too much. But at his sides small folds of fat overhung his trousers, an ominous fifth-column. He exercised fitfully for a few seconds before putting on the jacket of his pyjamas.

      ‘I intend to see that everything in this house is the best, anyway. The very best. Even if I have to do it without your help. You would think even for the sake of your children, you would care more. Don’t you want the best for them, and for us?’

      ‘Oh yes. For your birthday I’m going to get you a gold-plated thumbscrew. And you can buy me a monogrammed flagella. So I can keep my self-disgust fresh in your absence.’

      She was combing her hair. Cameron lit another cigarette. The flame from the match seemed to shoot up like a flare, illuminating a future that stretched infinitely before them, an unbroken plain of such petty quarrels. The thought of it was almost comfortable. There would never be any need for them to find new weaknesses in each other. They knew them all and where to hit them. Similarly, having been hit so often in the same places, they were largely immune to each other. It meant that while they gnawed away they could get on with other things, brushing shoes, drinking tea, reading a paper.

      ‘For one thing, Alice and Helen should be at a fee-paying school. Like Hutchie’s. They really should.’

      I’ve had enough, Cameron thought calmly. You’d better stop.

      ‘But you won’t hear of it. Why not? Is it just because I want them at one? Is it? Why do you want to spite all of us at every turn? You deprive us of so much. Like a vampire.’

      Cameron laughed incredulously.

      ‘Say that again,’ he said.

      ‘You’re like a vampire,’ Allison said defiantly, but she couldn’t quite see herself how it applied to him.

      Having her attention for a moment, Cameron started to dial on an invisible phone. After a second or so, he lifted the receiver.

      ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Doctor? Yes. She’s having them again. Same old hallucinations. The old family trait reasserting itself, I’m afraid. Fine, you’ll be right round. Will you bring the strait-jacket or shall I?’

      The silence that followed seemed as if it would be endless. Allison laid down her comb, sat in her chair, composed herself, and started to cry. Her carefully made up face unfolded like a withered flower. Running mascara spiked her eyes.

      Cameron looked at her impassively. His timing had been perfect, his aim flawless. It was the sort of expertise that could only come with long acquaintance. The history of a relationship was a bit like the history of a society. At first it’s pretty disorganised.

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