HARRYING HARRY
Harry’s wife possessed an ability to drive Harry almost to distraction. Jane was rather a plump woman – well, she liked to think of herself as plump, but her friends thought of her as solid, and inclined to stoutness – with a bossy nature that expressed itself around Harry in the kind of harrying you expect to encounter in a fat little terrier. She was a woman who always knew better, and believed in expressing her certitudes in a loud and determined voice.
She was constantly telling Harry that he had forgotten to do this or that, or should be doing something other than whatever task he had in hand. Harry would sigh, and try for a moment to pretend that he had not heard. But Jane’s voice invariably carried the day. She had the knack of pitching her tone progressively higher as she spoke, until her voice sharpened into the cutting edge of a buzzsaw. Harry invariably surrendered.
Harry’s life had been peaceful enough whilst he was working: commuting some thirty miles to a dull office job in London every day had meant rising early, snatching a hurried breakfast, and had brought him home half way through each weekday evening. Life had been predictably routine – Jane had retailed village gossip whilst cooking his supper, Harry had explored his own little world in between mouthfuls. They had generally watched a little television before turning in.
Harry had spent his weekends pottering: tending Jane’s garden in summer – for Jane ruled as mistress in all things both indoors and out – and dutifully escorting her on winter walks. He had also driven her shopping, though shopping was not his favourite pastime, and accompanied her to carboot sales and fetes, though he was a shy man, who largely preferred his own company. He had borne a great deal, for the sake of peace and quiet.
But now he was retired, and Jane was a burden. She appeared to view his retirement as a gift from heaven, and had mapped out a timetable for change the moment he had hung his suit in their bedroom wardrobe. ‘I’m not having you sitting staring at a screen all day in the spare bedroom’, she had told him on his first Monday of supposed freedom, after learning that Harry had bought himself a computer to help pass the time. ‘You can muck in by taking some of the strain.’
‘Mucking in’ was one of Jane’s favourite expressions. It generally meant performing some kind of household task for which she had neither time nor inclination. Harry found himself making Jane breakfast in bed, and doing a little light dusting, cooking from time to time, and vacuuming fluff from their carpets.
Jane had been succinct. ‘We both deserve our retirement’. Harry had noted that retirement seemed to mean more work for him, and rather less for Jane. But she had poohpoohed his complaint. ‘Neither of us is growing any younger, and my arthritis makes it hard for me to bend.’
Harry was surprised at her remark, because had seen her bend easily enough on spotting a stray pound coin lying on the pavement outside the village post office. But Jane had argued that she had been displaying great courage.
‘You don’t know the pain I have to put up with.’ She made a face suggestive of bravery overcoming agony, and flattened her right hand against the small of her back. ‘This damp weather is getting me down. Perhaps we should go away for a few days.’
Harry pretended not to hear, for Jane also regarded retirement as a key to the world. Her idea of ‘going away’ meant taking a coach trip somewhere, perhaps to enjoy the scenic beauties of the Lake District, or hunt for treasure in factory shops attached to china manufacturers in the Potteries, or possibly even further afield, to explore the Costa Brava or the Black Forest. Harry knew he would loathe every moment; there would be loud women and even louder men, falsely jovial and spattering all within earshot with droplets of phlegm and stale beer, contests for silly prizes, and Jane would flirt to provoke him.
Harry was not a jealous man, but Jane invariably looked foolish when she mean to appear winsome, and her attempts at coyness always made him want to blush. Men would leer, and other women would look embarrassed. Once he had found a man pawing her. It had been at a company Christmas party, and the man had been the chairman’s chauffeur, a slimy creature with insufferable airs. He had backed off, reluctantly, but Jane had preened herself.
Jane returned to the subject of coach trips a few days later. ‘I’ve found a very nice one, dear, and it’s not expensive at all.’
They were still in bed, and Harry was half way through reading his Daily Mail. He had made Jane’s tea and toast, and cup of coffee for himself, and returned to the comfort of his duvet. He liked the Daily Mail: it was really a newspaper for women, filled with features about thighs too large and bosoms too small, female empowerment, and the angst of being childless at thirtyfive. But sometimes it carried juicy little tales about lucubricious Middle Britain, and sometimes the tales engendered a little lust, for Harry still lusted, in a mild kind of way, despite being a pensioner.
He eyed Jane sideways, but she shook her head. ‘Not this morning, Harry, dear. I’m thinking about coach trips.’ She had some leaflets spread out around her, and picked one up, flourishing it at him. ‘Look, dear, here’s a trip to the Italian lakes. We’ve never been there, and they look very pretty.’
Harry visualised twenty-odd hours of non-stop driving, if not a great deal more, just to get to a doubtful destination. Jane would rest her head on his shoulder, and snore. The other passengers might well try to organise sing-songs, to pass the time. He would probably find himself cornered by the coach bore, some jovial fellow with an inexhaustible fund of opinions on every subject from world politics to the best ways of mulching strawberries. He knew he would hate it.
He frowned, trying to think of effective blocking manoeuvres. ‘I’m not sure we can afford it, dear.’
Jane looked superior. ‘Oh, yes, we can, dear.’
Harry looked at her, took in her smugness, and realised that she had mousetrapped him. Jane had money of her own. Not much, but she squirrelled away her pension every month in a bank account of her own, supplementing it with occasional earnings from baby-sitting and pet-sitting around the village.
She pursed her lips. It was not an attractive sight: for in tightening her mouth and lifting her chin she pulled up her dewlaps, making her look like nothing so much as a bad-tempered bloodhound. ‘I could go with Anne.’
Anne ranked as Jane’s best friend, and seemed to spend a good deal of her waking hours gossipping with Jane over warming cups of tea. Harry disliked her intensely, partly because he despised her husband, a watery man with a passion for growing prize chrysanthemums, partly because he disliked Anne’s poodle, a nasty, yapping little rat of a dog he had once caught defecating behind his sofa. He also detested the way in which Jane and Anne combined to turn on him at any convenient opportunity. The dog had been a prime case: Jane had waved the poodle’s misdemeanour away as a minor thing, with a sharp look at Harry, whilst Anne had signally failed to offer any help, leaving Harry to clean up the mess all on his own.
He sighed. He knew he had lost this particular battle without being allowed to fire a single shot. But then he always lost his battles with Jane. It was a fact of their married life. It had always been so, though sometimes he wished he possessed the courage to answer back. But life to men like Harry is seamless, because men like Harry need continuity. He had continued as he had begun, and his beginning had set his fate.
So they booked for a coach trip to Italy. Jane bought herself a new dress, a floral thing that made her look like one of the flower baskets that smart pubs favour. She allowed Harry to travel in his shirtsleeves, but packed several pullovers ‘just in case’ - she firmly believed in never taking chances - plus most of the contents of her medicine cupboard. She was doubtful about foreign standards of hygiene.
The coach set off, and Harry dozed a little, by fits and starts, because sleep, or the appearance of sleeping, provided a shield. But he began to perk up as he sat beside Jane on the deck of a P&O ferry and watched the white cliffs of Dover recede into the distance. They were to be billeted on the tour at a series of family-owned hotels, and Harry had a vision of better commons ahead. Jane had never been fond of cooking, and the coming of microwave ovens had wholly changed her dietary habits. Harry loathed frozen pies and pizzas with an almost visceral hatred.
However their rest stops en route to Italy offered little change from home cooking. Harry ploughed his way through plates of soggy meats and lumpy stews, and Jane frowned when he attempted, in half-forgotten French, to order wine. She was an abstemious woman, generally, though partial to an occasional rum and blackcurrant. She condoned beer in men, in small quantities, but viewed wine as both extravagant and foreign. Harry was not fond of beer, and had, perforce, to drink water.
However he managed subtly to change his drinking habits when they reached their hotel. It was a pretty place: very clean and with tiled floors, with staff who smiled a great deal, and seemed most anxious to please. The hotel possessed a bar, staffed by a nice-looking girl with a frank smile and tempting curves. Harry knew that he was much too old for such thoughts, but it was still nice to think them. A group of men from the coach gathered convivially, and he joined them. Jane shrugged. She intended to explore a shop or two before dinner, and parking Harry provided the surest guarantee of keeping him out of harm’s way. He was not a man on whom young girls smiled with much interest.
The hotel bar was equipped with a couple of slot machines, one armed bandits, and Harry chanced his luck. The machine blinked at him, and clucked and whirred, made strange metallic digesting noises, and then suddenly spewed out a small avalanche of euro coins.
Harry was dumbfounded. He paid for a round of drinks, and then another. He grew quite skittish, and the girl behind the bar watched him with interest, for she was always fascinated with the way wine crept to men’s heads. But she was a good-natured girl, with a kind heart, and so she also made sure that Harry changed most of his coins into banknotes, and stowed them safely in his wallet. Harry paid for a third round, and then his companions felt a little ashamed of letting him carry the whole burden of paying, and stumped up in turn. They had travelled for many hours, and they were hungry, and the wine went to their heads. They told each other dubious stories, and ogled the girl, and speculated on the possibilities offered by the presence of three women travelling together on their tour without male companions. Nice comfortable women, plainly in need of good homes. Several of the men at the bar were widowers, with comfortable, but lonely, homes.
Jane meanwhile explored. A man fell into step at her side, and she recognised him as a man from the coach. They chatted together as she scanned shop windows, and Jane sensed that he was taking an interest in her. She felt a frisson of excitement, for she generally kept men well at arm’s length – she lived in a small village, with many wagging tongues, and she found managing Harry in his retirement quite a time-consuming task. The man proposed a refreshment, and they sipped at glasses of white wine, and she felt quite exhilarated. She was having a small, and very well controlled, adventure.
Then they walked back to their hotel. The man opened the door for Jane, and respectfully stood aside, and she stopped short. She could see Harry at the bar, at the centre of a group of men, all of them seemingly tipsy, flirting with the barmaid. She could see that he was showing off, and making extravagant gestures. He was plainly making a fool of himself.
Jane swept into action. She reached Harry in a few quick strides, and yanked him out of the group with the force of a tractor yanking a bogged-down car out of a ditch. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Her voice was stern.
Harry stared at her. For a moment, just a split-second of a moment, he wanted to slap this fat, bossy, interfering woman hard across the face, to strike her with all the rage he had pent up in forty odd years of humiliation. But forty odd years of humiliation forms a containment that cannot easily be broken in a single flash of rage. He hesitated, and they stared, each at the other, in a battle of wills, and then he looked down.
Jane swelled in her victory, and Harry knew that the rest of the tour would be hell for him. The other men at the bar eyed him with a mixture of pity and contempt. The barmaid sighed. She felt sorry for this man, to be so humbled. But weakness is foolishness, and fools dig their own graves.