Sunday Best by Bernice Rubens Page B

alliance between the two of them frightened me. Tommy began to cry, and she too, burying their faces in each other’s arms, and I knew I had to get out of there, and leave them both to their own explanations, their own mutual forgiveness. But there was one small practical point. Their entwined bodies were blocking the door. As I walked across the room, I noticed that my trousers were still unbuttoned. With one hand, I made myself respectable, while with the other, I tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me, please,’ I said, and I edged my way between them and the door.
    Once outside in the street, I felt as if I had just come out of a cloakroom, and I intended to give it no more importance than just that. I knew I’d left a mess behind, but I didn’t care, because for some reason, I felt that neither of them would ever see me again. I suddenly felt very weary with my present way of life, and I knew that some decision had to be made to change it radically, though what change, or how to engineer it, I had no idea. But I knew that my life could not continue in its pretence much longer, and despite my depression, there was a certain excitement in the thought that some change was bound to come about, even, as I convinced myself, without my own participation. I had thoughts of going home and once more trying on my new Sundays, but pangs of that old father of mine, blunted the edge of that anticipation. All in all, I was lethargic with depression. I turned back to look at the Johnson house, and had it been on fire, it would not have moved me. I gave a fleeting thought to the two broken people inside and was furious with their gross interference with my life. I looked at my own house, but that too held nothing for me, save the delights of the ‘Femina Boutique’, and that, after all, was something, inspite of the rage that my father was pumping inside me. I grabbed the railings hard, trying to throttle his rude ghost, and then I felt myself weeping.
    I am almost ashamed to write that word, for I am not a man given to tears. And still I have no notion of why I cried. I remember only that I wanted to rid myself of Mrs Johnson and her son, of my poor joyless and childless Joy, of my mother and father too, and of all the loud unhappiness that I had tunnelled into other people’s lives. I’ll say that word again. I wept uncontrollably, and I don’t give it to you as a plea in mitigation. I’m a bastard really, and a sentimental one at that.

Chapter Nine
    That last piece of confession took a great deal out of me, and it has taken some time to recover my old rotten self. There is not a great deal that is gentle in my nature, but occasionally it gets the upper hand. Not that I resent it. I simply do not know how to deal with it. Friends, such as I have, have told me to let it take its course, that I am a better man than I allow myself to be. But I dare not give way to whatever kindness is within me, for the virtue destroys my defences. In truth, I do not like myself very much. That, too, is a defence I suppose, for it makes pointless any attack you may wish to make on me. You are right. I am rotten, and deserve no one’s concern, and if at any time I should be repentant of my behaviour, I beg you to ignore it. Remorse would be a lapse in me, as much as kindness. I hope we are now on the old footing again, and I can go back to my sorry tale.
    On Thursday, the day of the funeral, it was raining. As a child, holding my mother’s hand, and seeing a funeral in the rain, she would tell me that the world was weeping for the one who had died. So that when a cortège passed under a blazing sun, it was a devil going to his own, and the world was smiling. I never quite rid myself of this conviction, and occasionally it was shaken, as it was on that Thursday, when I couldn’t understand how anyone could mourn the passing of a man like Johnson, who, when dead, looked uncommonly like my own father.