had hoped for, except their own self-sufficiency. She had hoped that her life with Peter would absorb her entirely, leave nothing of her over to be a prey to nostalgia or regret. There had been times when nostalgia had almost incapacitated her, like a recurring illness. Sometimes she had lived through a whole week in which every day seemed to focus exclusively on the past, and it was like being in a house which had windows at the back only. But she had learned to live with this, and she could cope with it when it came. She simply administered to herself gradually increasing doses of hard work and altruism until immunity had been re-established.
But the feeling as it affected her now no longer responded to such treatment. Perhaps it was just that her complaint had reached its secondary stage. It was more tenacious than it had been, and it had assumed a subtly different nature. Before, she had recognized it simply as an intensified form of the nostalgia that becomes a part of all people as they grow older and the past begins to outweigh the future. She had thought of her own feeling as merely a highly particularized species of that general tendency, intenser for her because it was localized in one particular place and personalized into a few particular people. But now that no longer adequately accounted for it. Now it was not properly nostalgia at all. It was not a retrospective look at an irrecoverable past, something made poignant by the very fact of its being irredeemable. It was no longer content to have that pittance of time with which the present pensions off the past. It seemed determined to encroach upon the future. She had found herself lately seriously considering the possibility of making some sort of vague undefined contact with that part of her past that she had foresworn. Every time the realization of what she was doing came upon her she felt shocked at herself and determined not to do it again. What did she hope to gain from it? Even if she did reopen that door, what did she expect to find there that belonged to her? There was nothing for her there. She had seen to that. This was where she belonged. In this house with Peter. Everything that she had any right to was here. There was nothing for her anywhere else. Then why was she not content? What was it that she wanted?
‘Jane! Have you gone to bed or something?’
She started guiltily at Peter’s voice. She hastily checked her appearance again in the mirror, as if afraid her mental disarray might have a physical extension. Putting out the bedroom light, she went through to the living-room, donning a smile at the door.
‘I seem to have seen your face before,’ Raymond said. ‘We were nearly sending out a search-party for you there, Jane. You’d better take a compass next time.’
‘Were you developing the photographs?’ Peter’s voice was just this side of annoyance and no more.
‘Oh, the photographs!’ Her hands went up in surrender to his reproach.
‘Well, that was only what you went for, after all.’
‘You’d better check that room through there, Peter,’ Raymond said. ‘And make sure there’s not a lodger you don’t know about.’
She went back through to the bedroom, mingling her laughter with that of the others to cover the furtive sense of guilt she felt. She tried to gear herself to their mood. This was where she belonged, she told herself again. She was going to enjoy this evening. But she couldn’t overcome a vague feeling of strangeness as she re-entered the living-room.
‘These had better be good after the time we’ve waited,’ Raymond said. ‘Malta, The Millionaire’s Playground. A Pictorial Account of a Holiday on the George Cross Island. Golden beaches . . . Dusky maidens . . .’
‘Here’s one of Peter when his skin was just beginning to peel,’ Mrs Whitmore said, passing the photograph to Eleanor.
‘Ooh. Frying tonight.’ Eleanor giggled. ‘Mind you, Peter, you really suit blisters.’
‘You mean blisters suit him,’ Raymond emended.
‘I mean exactly what I said,’ Eleanor persisted.
‘You can say it how you like. It’s no skin off my nose.’
‘It’s not until the skin begins to peel that you get the full savour of your sunburn,’ Peter continued, like a lecturer ignoring hecklers. ‘The blisters are only a sort of apprenticeship in agony. But once you get down to doing a striptease with your skin, you become a real veteran. It’s like a Gipsy Rose Lee that doesn’t know where to stop. You scratch and you scratch. And then you scratch. I could hardly wait for meals to finish so that I could go up to the room for my next performance. I used to invite Jane up to see my itchings.’
‘This is one of the harbour at Valletta,’ Mrs Whitmore said.
They settled down to a relay of snapshots, with Mrs Whitmore providing explanatory captions and Peter using the incidents they recalled as launching pads for sardonic commentary on Malta.
‘It’s lovely scenery,’ Eleanor commented after some thought.
‘God, I wish I had said that,’ Raymond said, as he took the photograph from her. And went on at once, outrunning riposte, ‘Especially in the foreground there. Wow! Where do you book for this place? I thought Maltese women were supposed to be very prim. Concealing the tempting flesh and all that.’
‘Only the ones who’ve nothing to show,’ Peter said. ‘You do see some of them wearing long black dresses to go swimming right enough. Actually, they’re a lot worse than bathing-suits once they’ve been in the water. The way they sag and cling. Typical Maltese Irishness. It’s like the way you have to cover your upper arms in churches, isn’t it, Jane? No sleeveless dresses allowed. But it doesn’t matter how low the neckline is. Or how high you have the hemline.’
‘This was taken just coming into Gozo,’ Mrs Whitmore explained. ‘That’s the sister-island to Malta. It’s only half-an-hour in the boat. We spent two days there.’
‘Which was just about a day-and-a-half too much,’ Peter said. ‘It’s strictly a poor relation. They play up everything, show you round any old bit of rubble they’ve got handy. They just about give you guided tours of the public conveniences. Remember the prehistoric temple? A ring of boulders with weeds . . .’
Mrs Whitmore was content to let him do the talking. It was all she could manage to take even a neutral factual part in the conversation. She found herself wondering what it had to do with Raymond and Eleanor. It was obvious that their interest was only token. They were more concerned with finding opportunities for needling each other. Why were they always like that? It wasn’t the first time she had been at a loss to understand why they were still together. Surely it would have been more honest for them just to separate. Yet she couldn’t help asking herself what right they had to inflict themselves on other people like this. On her. She felt a revulsion from them. What did she have in common with them? What was she doing sitting in their company?
‘You see, I was trying to get him to tell us the price of the taxi before I got in. But he just kept saying, “Rambla beach, sor. Lovely for swim. I take you Rambla. No bother money. Later. Later”.’
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