Hungry ghosts, p.17
Hungry Ghosts, page 17
Occasionally, he slept in the bed of another woman he had met in the pub, and for that one night, he believed that he loved them. He felt his attraction to women had more psychological and moral depth than mere lust and the ephemerality of sex, which is not to say that he didn’t heartily enjoy his sexuality. It wasn’t, however, simply the game of seduction or the play of furtive glances that drove him forward, but rather the feeling of peace that he found with each final embrace, for he was never happier than when lying in the arms of a woman. He imagined that, with each and every woman, he could at last be truly happy as his psyche reached out for love. When he met and married Ruth, Vic’s flesh had relaxed into the safety he craved. The solution turned out to be temporary, though, and his hunger resurfaced, never to be fully assuaged.
He told himself that Ruth was devoted to James, at his expense. Though he understood that she needed to care for their son, he still felt abandoned, especially in the bedroom. It seemed to him that Ruth was always too tired for sex.
Vic met Beatriz at a mutual friend’s dinner party in 1951. Dark-haired and olive-skinned, she was the niece of the Portuguese ambassador in London and the on-off girlfriend of Mark, brother of Ruth’s friend Molly. Before the dinner, they had witnessed her having an enormous row with Mark, before she doused him with a glass of Pinot. Vic was impressed. Beautiful and feisty, he thought.
‘Mark can be a bit of a one,’ said Ruth. ‘Molly says he’s done the dirty on Beatriz more than once.’
‘Some people are never satisfied,’ said Vic.
Ruth shrugged. ‘She keeps taking him back though, silly girl.’
Vic positioned himself carefully with Ruth to his left and Beatriz to his right, from which vantage point he engaged with each woman in what he told himself was equal measure.
‘So, what do you do in life, Beatriz?’ he asked.
‘I’m studying architecture, actually,’ she said with a demure smile and a flash of her ebony eyes.
‘Oh, really? We’ve a lot in common then,’ he said. ‘We’re both interested in aesthetics and the making of the beautiful. At least I hope that is what you want to do. Someone as striking as you must surely want to create sublime buildings that make architecture worthwhile. You don’t want to design one of those horrible functional towers they’ve started to build, do you? The plague of London for those of us who walk past them every day. And pity the poor bastards who live in them. I know London needs new homes, but really…’
She smiled and mirrored his attention. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘I want to create spaces that are beautiful and fun, buildings that lift the spirit.’
‘And I’m sure you will,’ he said. ‘I can tell that you’re a creative talent.’
Vic returned his attention strategically back to Ruth.
‘How are you doing?’ he whispered in her ear. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. I hope dinner’s coming soon.’
‘Me too,’ she mouthed. ‘And don’t you dare abandon me again to this mega bore on my left, or you’re a dead man.’
He laughed. ‘Deal.’
After dinner, Beatriz was once again the focus of Vic’s admiration.
‘You have the most remarkable face,’ he said. ‘You know, I am a photographer by trade, and I’d really love to take some pictures of you. Works of art, I mean, nothing distasteful. If you wouldn’t mind.’
He spoke to her in his most practised and professional tone, and with Ruth visibly listening and stroking his hand, Vic’s sincerity was not in doubt.
He met with Beatriz as planned, took rolls of photographs and showed the best of them to Ruth, who said that they were wonderful. After the modelling sessions were over, he invited Beatriz for dinner to say “thank you”, and in the process, rediscovered his charm.
He took Beatriz to L’Escargot, an upmarket French restaurant in Covent Garden which had been recommended by a journalist friend. They sat opposite each other in the romantic candlelight ambiance, and he ordered an expensive bottle of wine. He smiled at Beatriz, and she smiled back. They talked about architecture, photography and the war. After they had eaten, when he slid his hand over hers, she allowed his palm to rest there. It was late when they left the restaurant, and he escorted her home to Kensington. On the steps up to the front door of the tall, white-painted terrace, he pulled her towards him, and they kissed.
‘You know that I’m married,’ he said when they separated.
‘I know, and I don’t care. I’m not expecting undying love, and besides, I’ll be returning to Portugal soon enough. It’s just a bit of fun.’
They said au revoir and she gave him her phone number. Vic had not given Ruth any indication that he would be working overnight, and so he needed to be home. He could have claimed that he’d been given a last-minute assignment, but he didn’t want to push his luck, and besides, he wasn’t sure that Beatriz was even going to invite him in. He had no idea about her living situation, though she was obviously not poor.
‘I’ll call you,’ he said as he skipped down the steps with a lightness of spirit that he thought had abandoned him years ago. It was the same feeling that he’d had the night he’d met Ruth dancing at the Palais in another life.
A week later, when Ruth returned home unexpectedly from Carol’s house, and young James was at school, she headed for the bedroom to change her clothes, only to discover Vic and Beatriz naked in their bed. She stared at him, and rage rose in her chest until it spilled over and gushed down her arms and legs.
‘What the… you bastard!’
And with that, she turned tail and walked slowly, and with as much dignity as she could muster, out of the room and down the stairs to the kitchen. Five minutes later, she heard the front door close and assumed that Beatriz was making her cowardly getaway.
When Vic walked into the kitchen, she ensured that the atmosphere was glacial, like the coming of a bitter English winter to the flatlands of East Anglia. He sat down opposite her and gazed at her across the kitchen table.
‘I’m so sorry, Ruth. I don’t know what I was thinking. It will never happen again, I promise. It meant nothing to me.’
Ruth reckoned she had a pretty good idea what he was thinking. A young, attractive Portuguese woman with no ties. Easy prey for him. The pig! She stood up and walked down the hallway to the living room where she sat in an armchair. She was not alone for long.
‘Talk to me, Ruth, please,’ he begged as he squatted beside her.
‘I can’t. Just leave me alone.’
There were no lifeboats left on the Titanic. He pleaded guilty to being a cheating, lying bastard and begged for mercy. He confessed. He promised. He begged. He apologised. All to no avail. She wouldn’t talk to him.
‘Please, Ruth. I don’t care about her. I love you.’
‘Go away.’
Ruth knew that she would have to talk to him eventually, but not right now. She wanted to be calm when they spoke, not hot with anger and shame at the painful demonstration that she was not enough.
For the next few days, they struggled to push their exhausted limbs through the vortex into which they had fallen, helplessly and uncontrolled, tumbling head over heels, disoriented and scared, like skydivers whose parachutes had failed on exit. Ruth shovelled stewed apples down James’s reluctant throat in icy silence and wandered through the flat like a ghost, her vacant eyes haunting their desolate bedroom.
After two weeks of his sustained pleading, the first buds of spring appeared in her heart, like edelweiss pushing through the thawing permafrost. She declared him a shit-encrusted arse of an illegitimate mongrel who did not deserve her love. But damn it, she loved him anyway.
‘Thank you, Ruth. I love you so much, and I don’t want to lose you. What can I do to make it better?’
She gazed at him across the kitchen table with a face loaded down with sad accusations. ‘I want to forgive you, but it ain’t so easy,’ she said. ‘I’ll try, that’s the best I can do.’
Slowly, slowly, over the next six months, they inched their way back to some sort of normal. Beatriz was ostensibly forgotten, though Ruth could still feel the bruise on her heart.
While Vic’s reputation as a photojournalist grew, Ruth struggled to reconcile the day-to-day experience of her husband with the public perception of him as a rebel and a man of principle. Where critics saw a photographer devoted to exposing the horrors of war and injustice, she experienced a man who drank too much and was woken by nightmares in the early hours of each morning, if he was there at all. She tried hard to save him: she lay beside him and stroked his brow after his dreams had woken him in fright; she had long taken on all the household responsibilities and the care of James; she worked hard to find something to praise him for when he was down; and she encouraged him, without success, to talk about his moods.
One morning, when Ruth walked into the kitchen, Vic was seated at the table munching toast with the paper laid out on the table next to his giant mug of tea. Ruth sat at the table and calmed her mind by studying a tiny ant as it scurried along the table edge and then circumvented an abandoned coffee cup, before disappearing down the antique leg; then she looked up at Vic, who had the air of a man who had awoken feeling out of sorts.
‘Good morning,’ she said, cheerfully.
‘Good morning.’
‘How are you today? Didn’t you sleep well?’
‘I’m okay.’
‘You seem a little… distracted. Are you feeling unwell?’ she asked.
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘You’re drinking a lot, so I just wondered if…’
‘I’m fine, Ruth.’
‘You’re not seeing things again?’
He hesitated for a moment and glanced out of the window. ‘No, that’s all in the past. Let’s leave it at that, can we?’
In the end, she came to believe what she had refused to accept the day he entered the East London Psychiatric Hospital: that he had been a hopeless cause from the start. The spirit of optimism that had accompanied her wedding day had faded, and with each rebuff to her affection, she watched her love retreat from its object inch by excruciating inch, moment by disappointing moment, until her warmth and joy in Vic ebbed away.
Her wonderful man had become a grumpy old drunk who would announce his return home by slamming the back door and staggering down the hallway before he crashed into the front room, swaying like a newborn calf unable to master its uncoordinated legs.
‘Ruth, why is there never any friggin’ food in this friggin’ house, huh?’ he shouted on one such occasion.
She felt the nascent violence slam against her chest like a tsunami in full flow and turned her eyes away from Vic in silence. She was not ignoring him, far from it, she was mobilising all her energy to prevent herself being swept away by fear.
In those days, she still believed that Vic loved her, in his own peculiar way. Once the black cloud lifted, he would come to his senses and beg her forgiveness. Chastened and full of remorse, he would say, ‘I am so sorry, Ruth darling, it will never happen again,’ and to their son he would say, ‘Hey, Jimmy mate, here’s a half a crown, go and buy yourself something.’
That was the way it was.
Vic got pissed. He acted stupid. He slept it off.
Three years after he joined The Times, the paper sent him overseas to cover the war in Indochina, where he spent months at a time between rare visits home.
‘I hardly see you. And James misses his father – he’s only five,’ said Ruth with a gentle, quiet force.
‘I do what I’m told,’ said Vic. ‘Besides, we need the money.’
‘Which you spend down the pub.’
Ruth was determined to re-establish the family feeling for James and so she rented a cottage on a farm in Sussex for a weekend to show him the animals and let him spend some time with his father.
The long, thin cottage was set in a gravel courtyard and surrounded on three sides by stables and a small barn. In the front yard, an abandoned and rusting tractor was succumbing to the entropic consequences of time, a process hastened by James as he clambered over the bonnet and onto the cab roof. It was a beautiful winter’s day, cold but bright and crisp. A handful of Rhode Island Reds were hunting for bugs in the dusty yard and a scrawny grey dog was scratching the front door, trying to find some warmth.
Ruth watched Vic lead James across the yard and down a gravel pathway to feed the chickens and stroke the cows. When they had finished, James was allowed to take a pony ride around the farm. He appeared nervous at first, but the young girl who was in charge reassured him.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you. We’re not going to do anything adventurous today. We’re just going to walk around the yard a little.’
It all went wrong though.
James fell off the pony and landed with a thud and his shoulder smashed into the frozen earth. He lay on the ground moaning: ‘I’ve broken my arm! I’ve broken my arm!’
Ruth rushed to his aid. But Vic didn’t believe him.
‘You’re having us on, mate,’ said Vic. ‘Come on, up you get.’
Ruth made Vic drive them to the hospital in the bouncy old jalopy they had borrowed from Trevor, just in case. James cried out with every bounce and jolt. And lo and behold, his arm was bust in two places, at the shoulder and along the forearm. ‘No wonder you’re in pain,’ said the doctor.
Vic was cross as hell and shouted at his son. ‘You stupid boy! We’ll have to cancel the rest of the holiday now.’
‘You have such a temper, Vic,’ said Ruth, sadly. ‘It’s scary for James and for me.’
‘Oh yes, that would be right, everything’s my fault.’
One blue Monday, Vic finally went too far. Ruth and James were sitting together in the front room watching The Adventures of Robin Hood on TV when Vic rolled home. James was excited because he was approaching his sixth birthday and had asked for a Robin Hood outfit and a bow and arrow.
‘Why doesn’t anyone in this damn house listen to a bloody word I say?’ he shouted.
‘Jesus, Vic. You’ve been drinking, and it’s still only afternoon,’ said Ruth, her disdain palpable.
‘So what, can’t a man have a drink?’
She peered up at him with pleading eyes. ‘Vic, you promised!’
‘I’ll do what I want, right? And not you or anyone else is going to stop me. Full bloody stop. You get it?’
‘Don’t you care about your family?’ she pleaded.
‘And that’s fucked too. God knows why I ever married you. It’s a bloody mystery to me. You dragged me in front of the altar before I had time to blink. I must have been off my bloody rocker.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Vic. Don’t you know how often I wish I’d never set eyes on you that night at the Palais? Don’t you know how many times I’ve wondered why I was burdened with a madman like you? I gave up my education and my career for this family. I reckon I’m just about done now.’
‘Pregnant and forced out of the WAAF, that’s why.’
‘How dare you!’ she said as she stood up. ‘I left the WAAF to have our baby. Our child, Vic, ours.’
‘You never wanted the baby. He was just a bloody accident.’
‘I wanted an education and a career, and I gave it up for you and our child. You got your career and not once did you thank me or show me any gratitude. You’re a mean, horrible, nasty man. I hope you rot in hell!’
‘Bitch!’
He raised his hand in preparation to slap her across the face.
James jumped to his feet and charged at his father.
‘Dad, what are you doing? Stop it!’
Vic swayed like bamboo in the breeze and glared at him.
‘Get to your room, boy,’ he commanded.
James tugged at his father’s arm with all the strength a young boy could muster until Vic palmed him in the chest and he rocked back, crashing into the door and falling onto his backside.
‘Don’t make me tell you twice. Now get off with you!’
James clambered to his feet in shocked silence and stood immobile like a marble statue, staring at his father as if he’d seen a ghost. Then he turned and belted down the hallway to his room. Ruth ran after him and led him into the marital bedroom where she locked the door, leaving Vic to sleep it off on the couch. She turned towards James and pulled on a half-smile from the deep reservoir of her life’s optimism, then she opened her arms and hugged James with all her might.
‘Are you alright, love?’
‘I guess,’ he said. ‘We’ll all be okay, won’t we?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Ruth as she stroked James’s hair. ‘It’s all such a terrible, terrible mess.’
‘What are we going to do now?’
‘We should try and get some sleep.’
‘Mum. Was I really just an accident?’
‘Jimmy, I love you more than anyone in the whole world.’
‘But what did Dad mean? I was a bloody accident.’
‘Dad was drunk, Jimmy, love. He didn’t know what he was saying.’
‘I don’t even know what he meant. But I didn’t like it.’
Ruth cupped her hands around James’s face and looked into his eyes. ‘Darling Jimmy, what you need to understand is that you are loved and wanted. I love you. Your dad loves you. Grandma and Grandad love you. I see you. I love you. Do you understand?’
Jimmy nodded his head. ‘I guess.’
‘Come and get some sleep.’
She led him to the bed, and they lay down together, her arms wrapped around his torso. He tossed and turned and wriggled around for a while so that she feared they might be in for a long, sleepless night. After twenty minutes, though, fatigue had its way: his eyes shut, his breathing slowed and he was asleep.
She knew that sleep was what she needed too. Her mind, however, was jammed with thoughts that arose uninvited from the depths and frothed and foamed and crashed more fiercely than the wildest of waves. Rest would not come.
