Perfection Comes at a Price, page 7
“Has Eric proposed to you?”
“No, he hasn’t, but he will. You’ll see. I have been patient all this time and now I’ll get my reward.”
“Just don’t count your chickens till they’ve hatched,” said her father. He was by no means convinced about the matter. In his opinion the relationship between Katie and Eric had gone on for too long. He felt that if Eric really had intended to marry Katie, he would have done so long ago.
“Well, I shall confront him about it. I’ll tell him it’s about time,” said Katie.
Thus, on that October day when she confronted Eric about the question of their marriage, Katie got the shock of her life when he said that no, he was not going to marry her, in fact he was ending their relationship. He had been meaning to tell her these last days, but she had beaten him to the post by her words.
“You have been stringing me along all these years, making me believe that you were going to marry me!” she yelled.
“Please calm down. I have not been stringing you along. I have never mentioned marriage to you.”
“You have told me over and over again that you loved me. That means marriage. You bed me as if I was your wife.”
“I have bedded you because I love you, Katie. Believe me, I really do love you. I have always loved you.”
“You say that you love me! Rubbish. That can’t be true because you don’t want to marry me. You are a liar and a cheat!” she continued to yell.
“You know that that is not true. It hits me heavily that I shall not marry you, and when you have calmed down a bit, I’ll explain.”
Katie started to sob.
“I’ll tell all and sundry how badly you have treated me, I’ll tell….” Sobs racked her and for a while they were all that could be heard.
“Why? Why? What have I done?”
“Katie. As I have decided that I shall not be marrying you, I must end this relationship now. It is not fair that I should “string you along” any further, as you say. I have given it considerable thought, and I have come to the conclusion that a marriage between us would not work.”
“But we love each other.”
“Yes, Katie, that is true. But here is more to marriage than just love.”
“What! No. There can’t be anything more important to a couple than love.”
“I would be unable to make you happy. The type of life that I envisage to lead would only cause suffering for you. I know that with certainty.”
“I would be willing to suffer anything for you, Eric.”
“Maybe so, Katie. But I would not want that. I would not want to watch by your side and see you suffer. Especially as I would have no means of alleviating anything. It would be torture for me as well as for you.”
“I don’t want to live in that case!” screamed Katie, “I don’t understand what has happened to us. Is this happening? How can it be? Have you fallen for someone else?”
“No, I have not. During all our time I have been faithful to you and I can assure you that I love no-one else. But I will not ruin us both in a marriage.”
“Oh my God! What am I going to do? Eric, what can I do?”
“My very dearest Katie, you should concentrate on your family and your friends. They lend you support. Especially Nandita. Get on with your work and go out to meet people. Make new friends. Out there is surely the right man for you to marry.”
“I love only you, Eric.”
“At the moment yes. But you will fall in love again. After today I shall not be seeing you nor shall I answer any calls. I believe that a clean break is best. It enables both of us to calm down and get a grip on ourselves. Believe you me, it is as hard for me as it is for you.”
Eric took Katie home in a taxi. At the door he kissed her forehead and then turned, without looking back.
Katie cried herself to sleep. The next morning she woke up with a heavy head and a terrible anguish. The worst had happened to her. Eric did not want her. He was not going to marry her. She felt as if the floor had fallen from under her feet. She could not fathom it. He was not going to marry her because it would make her unhappy. That just wasn’t true. She might not have understood everything, but as she knew she made him happy, of course happiness would have followed in a marriage. She would not have demanded anything; she was content for him to rule the roost. He knew better anyhow.
There had to be some hidden reason for him not to want to marry her. She knew and felt that he loved her. Was it perhaps something connected to those deep, dark moods of which she had the odd glimpse on the occasions when he had got drunk in her company? The depth of those dark feelings had frightened her. She realised that she knew only patches of his character and what drove him on.
To the world he was jolly and superficial. What had he wanted? Now that she thought about it, Katie remembered how at the beginning he had tried to interest her in history, art and music, but seeing that she did not have the same enthusiasm, he had given up on that. He had tried to teach her card games, but she had no card sense, and it had had to be given up.
It began to dawn on Katie that Eric probably wanted someone who had similar interests to himself. It was an understandable wish. But as for wives, no wife would be able to fulfil everything. Eric seemed to want perfection. Well, that was something Katie could not provide.
Hitherto she had had no worries about her own self. Now with a sudden pang she became aware of having a whole host of deficiencies. Good God, how many were there? She must be full of them! The more she thought about it, the more she realised that she excelled at nothing. She was not really good at anything. An average, bordering on below average, that was a good description of her. How dreadful!
She could now see that she was not good enough for Eric. She agreed with that thought entirely. Why should such a brilliant man want a nobody as a wife? A massive inferiority complex overwhelmed Katie. She was appalled at herself. That was the worst. Eric had seen that she was untrainable. Of course he would not want such a wife. She was a low-brow nothing. Her looks were immaterial, they paled into insignificance. The love of someone like herself was worthless. It was already a miracle that Eric had loved her at all and had given so much of his time to her.
No, she would not embarrass him with her presence. He had not deserved that. Like the sewer-rat that she was, she would skulk back into her sewer.
For a good three weeks, Katie could not bring herself to tell anyone about the end of her relationship with Eric. Then she finally told her parents.
“Katie darling,” said her father, “I think I told you over three years ago that it would come to nothing. As your relationship stretched longer and longer without any talk of marriage, it somehow lost its power. Don’t look so desolate, my girl, Eric did love you. It could be clearly seen. If you had insisted on marriage as soon as you both had jobs, it might possibly have taken place.”
“Oh Dad,” interrupted Katie, “we had been together since we were sixteen. You know what I mean.”
Her father was truly astonished. He had had no idea that such things had been going on at such an early stage.
“I am sorry to hear that. I can only conclude that by such behaviour you removed any hunting instincts from the man. You were like a rabbit that sits in front of the hunter. Dear me.”
“But I loved him so much.” By now Katie was sobbing. “I still do.”
“Sure you do,” her mother soothed her. “It is not possible to turn affections on and off like taps. Either they are there, or they are not. It is possible that it was a kind of puppy-love for Eric, and it changed as he matured.”
“You are still young, my darling,” continued her mother, “You will fall in love again.”
Katie did not reply.
When she went to see Nandita in December, her friend managed to clarify many things to her. Nandita at the age of twenty-six was much more mature than Katie. For five years she had been a married woman. She and her husband lived in a nice house in Earl’s Court. From time to time Katie and Eric had been invited to a dinner there. Eric had been most impressed.
After finishing school, Nandita had trained as a nurse. Her great interests in life, playing the sitar and Indian classical dance would not provide a job. She trained at Hammersmith Hospital. When she had become qualified at the age of twenty-one, she was offered a job there. That is when Cupid struck. A new young ear, nose and throat specialist had come.
The young specialist, Dr Ishan Desai, fell hook, line and sinker for Nandita as soon as he set eyes upon her. The man was called Ike in the hospital. His passion was returned. In no time at all he asked Nandita if he might court her and asked to see her parents. She was delighted by this proper approach.
Meanwhile the Patels had moved to Ealing. Mr Patel had managed to buy a house. His business was on the ground floor and the family lived on the two upper floors. Mr Patel had done wonders to have achieved this.
Never in their dreams would the Patel parents have thought that their daughter would marry anyone but an ordinary Indian, much less that she would find a young consultant who was well off. Dr Ishan was welcomed with open arms. He did not allow his parents to dissent in any way, and as an only son, they did not want to lose him. He had been born in London and spoke English without an Indian accent. He was very conscious of being British and welcomed the fact that Nandita felt similarly. The wedding was a colourful Indian one. Katie and Eric had been invited to it. They had been very happy for their friend.
Ishan and Nandita were very well suited to each other.
When Nandita opened the door, she could see at once that something was terribly wrong with her friend.
“Katie, my dear friend, what is the matter?”
“Eric has left me.”
“Oh no. How terrible. Come here and sit down. Now, tell me all about it, if you can.”
Katie started talking. She burst into fearful sobs and Nandita held her and patted her. She wisely let her friend cry and did not try to hurry her. The whole tragic story came out. Nandita turned out to be much more astute than Katie.
“Dear Katie,” she said, “I know all about feelings of inadequacy. Don’t forget that I am an Indian in England. But this is not about me. Tell me, did you not notice how Eric kept changing? Already when he was but nine years old, he started to wear quality clothes. My father, since he’s a tailor, noticed it immediately. It was underplayed, but Eric began to look smart.
Remember the Richmond Theatre. The whole estate talked about it for months. He was beginning to reach out. On two occasions I saw Eric in a museum. As soon as he saw my family, he quickly disappeared from the scene. My father explained to me that the boy did not want to be seen. I always assumed that you knew about his outings.”
“Oh Nandita. I did not. How stupid and blind I have been. He did try to drag me to some cultural events but he saw my preference for cinema and dance. I am paying for it now.”
A new wave of tears followed.
“No wonder he did want to marry me.”
“Now, don’t be disparaging about yourself. You are a different personality from him, and you have different needs.”
“I only need Eric.”
“That is probably part of the problem,” pointed out Nandita, “to be too needy of another person puts pressure on him, and eventually he starts to resent it. He begins to feel that it is his duty to be with the other person, rather than a free joyful wish to be with her. In a marriage such a situation can occur if one is not careful. Often the needier spouse puts the heavy pressure of duty upon the other so as to prevent him from escaping instead of looking into herself and then correcting her own behaviour.”
“If I had started to learn the same things as Eric, I might not have lost him. What do you think?”
“Most probably you would not.” Nandita found it necessary to lie for her friend’s sake.
She felt very sorry for Katie, who saw Eric only through rose-tinted glasses. In her opinion Katie had actually been lucky to have escaped Eric’s clutches! That man was all out for perfection. Poor Katie would have suffered constant orders from him as what to do or not to do, what to say or not to say, what to wear or not to wear, which books to read and which not to read, and so on. The list was endless. Katie would have become a nervous wreck in such a marriage. Eric was the type never to be satisfied and Katie the type to take all the blame upon herself.
With an upper class wife, proud Eric would be the underdog who would not dare to complain about anything. Such a one would serve him right. The man was a boot-licker and a cunning and ruthless one at that. Of course he was exceptionally intelligent and exceptionally handsome.
“Nandita,” Katie was saying, “how is married life after five years?”
“Ike and I are very happy, and I shall see to it that it stays that way. I have not brought any Indian element into our marriage. I dress and behave like a western woman. I live in England. I do not allow India nor my Indian relatives to encroach upon my marriage. I have India when I visit my parents and then of course I wear a sari to please them. Gujarati I will teach to any children of ours as all languages are useful. By the way, Katie, I am three months pregnant.”
“Congratulations, Nandita, how wonderful.”
“My parents sighed with relief. Nearly five years of marriage without a child is difficult for Indians to understand. I wanted time for us two to cement our marriage first. And Ishan agreed. A child is not necessarily a uniting force.
Katie and Nandita prattled on for a while and Katie started to feel better. Before Katie left, Nandita said, “Dear Katie, do try to go out and meet people. And another thing, you have always had a beautiful singing voice. Why don’t you join a choir? That way you will have a new activity and a new set of friends. Think about my suggestion, will you.”
A month later, in January 1971, Katie joined a choir.
Chapter 13
As for Eric, it had been with a heavy heart that he had ended his relationship with Katie. As hard as he might try, he saw no way for them to be able to attain happiness in a marriage. By pushing her away, he knew that he had wounded her mortally. It would probably make her uncertain and mistrustful of any men for life. He could only hope that she would meet someone who would love her and make her happy.
It was an evening with the whisky bottle. He poured himself a good dose. He would get drunk that night. The next day was Saturday, the usual day for Katie to come to him, and now there would be a void. He poured another drink.
By his action he had doomed himself to loneliness. He knew for certain that among the upper classes he would never meet someone to whom he could open his heart or who could understand his personality. Katie had been the only person in whose company he had had no need to pretend. She knew all about his background as she shared it, she knew the horrors he had had to endure, knew his struggles and his advances. What she had failed to grasp was how deeply it had affected him.
It was a terrible shame that all his efforts at trying to educate her had come to nought. It was unfortunately beyond her. He felt that he had made a fair number of tries, only to fail to get her interested. Her interest lay in him, Eric. It was flattering but of no use to him in his future plans. He wondered whether he should have left her already as soon as he joined the Foreign Office. That had been the time when he really knew that he would not be able to marry her. He had not had the heart to do so any earlier that absolutely necessary. He so needed her. As she needed him.
She fulfilled one half of him: his past. She was unable to fulfil the forward- moving half of him. Whichever way he turned, he would only ever be half fulfilled. However, under no circumstances would he choose to remain with the backward-looking half. It was his duty to himself to strive forward the best he could. He would not compromise anything.
Katie would always fill one half of his heart. He would have to find somebody else to fill the other half.
He already had someone in his sights, Philippa Saunders, the only child of Sir Philip Saunders, the eminent scientist, whom he had met through the bridge club. She had fallen in love with him the moment she had seen him. That had been clear to Eric. While he was still with Katie, he had not approached her except to say hello and be with her at the occasional play at the same table. But he had noted the potential that the club offered for striking up an acquaintance. Now the situation had changed. He was free and at the stage where he was sure of himself. He was handsome and charming; he had what could be called “the gift of the gab”, and by now he was educated and at the beginning of an important career. A nobody no longer. Women were not indifferent to him. He had for some time now had all the opportunities to play the field widely, but he had had no interest in doing so because he had had Katie.
Philippa Saunders had all the qualities he needed. To look at she was nothing special. She was not ugly, only somewhat plain in a Spanish manner. She had long dark hair, somewhat sallow skin and a long, prominent nose, just like her father. She was six years his senior. It was evident that she had not had many takers so far in spite of the monied background she had. Eric had well noticed how she paid covert attention to him. It augured well.
He would start a courtship. His first move was to suggest to her that they occasionally play as partners. She was most flattered as she knew that Eric was a superior player. At the bridge club to which they both belonged, he sometimes suggested that they meet a bit earlier and have a coffee together. She was there invariably at least half an hour in advance. That was to make sure that she would not miss one minute. It catered for any delays on the Underground. On one occasion Eric had made himself late on purpose so that he arrived just as the play was beginning. He had seen from her face that she had been most disappointed. Good. The lady was definitely keen on him. Then he invited her to a lunch. That clinched it. Philippa could not disguise how pie-eyed she was as regards Eric.
