Shuttlecock

[26]

I close the book and return it to the shelf. I fold up the piece of paper on which I have been writing these notes and slip it into my pocket. I don’t want Marian or the kids to discover it. I go up to the bathroom to get ready for bed.

Marian is lying in a foot or so of soapy water. Her skin is pink with the heat, and globules of sweat cover her face. She says ‘Hello’ uneasily and coyly. This is not because she reacts with modesty at being seen in the bath, but because when she is in the bath she is vaguely conscious of appearing ridiculous. She wears a plastic shower cap with a frill and likes to surround herself with all sorts of oils and lotions. ‘Hello,’ I return, and stand, looking down at her, by the edge of the bath. She peers up at me with the frozen look of someone anticipating some attack and scared to provoke that attack by making a move of defence. She lowers her chin and seems to be trying to draw her whole body beneath the water. In other circumstances and around the house generally she can act with indifference or resentment, but here she is cornered and has no choice but to plead innocence. Her breasts bob and glisten; just beneath the surface is the dark triangle between her legs. But my thoughts are neither aggressive nor lustful. I am thinking of Martin and Peter when they were very young. How I used to bathe them in a plastic baby-bath; how when I sat them in the water I used to think how tender, how pitiful their pink flesh was — even hot water would make them scream; how they used to look up with the same look as Marian now — uncertain, defenceless, compelled to trust — and how I used to think: ‘Now they are at my mercy.’

‘What are you looking at?’ she says ineptly.

‘You’re all pink,’ I say, equally ineptly.

And I have this sudden urge to wash my wife. To kneel down at the edge of the bath and — with the utmost tenderness — to run the soap and the bath-sponge over her body.

When I first knew Marian I used to meet her sometimes, at the end of the day, at the clinic where she worked as a physiotherapist. There were all these people, recovering from broken bones, with muscle defects and spinal problems, and there was this lovely, healthy girl instructing them. I used to watch them, doing exercises, through the glass doors. Most of the patients were elderly or middle-aged men, some of them solid, self-important types made to look foolish through sudden incapacity. I used to think: now they are having to learn to walk again and use their arms, like children. They used to worry about all sorts of things like bank overdrafts and making sure of their pensions; now they are all occupied with something as simple as getting their bodies to work. I could see their pent-up annoyance and frustration. But they obeyed Marian’s instructions meekly and implicitly and looked at her as if they depended on her completely. I used to be amazed and jealous at Marian’s power over her patients; even a little bit afraid of her because I thought that the power she exercised over them she would also wield over me. But when the time came it was quite different. I was surprised by her passivity and by the way her body became something offered up completely to me. I suppose that is what happens in love: you bare your breast and say, I am in your hands. And the first time we went to bed together I couldn’t help thinking of those men, behind the glass doors, with their braces and crutches and sticks.

‘It’s hot in here,’ I say, wiping my brow. Another stupid and pointless remark. Marian must see that I’m as bewildered as her. The room is full of vapour. Condensation streams off the bathroom tiles. We look at each other through a mist.

And later, in the bedroom, when I’m already in bed, with Dad’s book propped before me, Marian comes in and there is a moment when once again she must be, fleetingly, naked. She has a bath-towel wrapped round her, tucked under her arms and coming down just over her hips. She bends down to dump some clothes on a chair and her bottom shows. I look, but it’s not desire I feel. We haven’t made love for weeks but it’s not desire I feel, even though I felt it only an hour ago when she stood in the hall. She unwraps the towel. She doesn’t wear a night-dress. It’s hot. Outside, it’s the sort of velvet mid-summer night in which no creature sleeps. She slips into her side of the bed. How tender, how pitiful. We used to get up to all those erotic games, now we are like a shy couple, starting over again. She is dusted with talc. Her skin smells like a baby. She says, ‘When are you going to stop reading that book?’ And I say, ‘Soon. Quite soon.’