Her Victory (2 page)

He stood, and leaned towards her. Plain, incontrovertible statements upset him most, as well as the simple pleas which he never had the generous pleasure of acceding to because she only made them after he had already ridden rough-shod over her.

She had never seen him so angry, probably because he hadn't been properly frightened before. ‘What, for God's sake, is wrong with asking you to fry my breakfast? How can such a natural request be seen as “getting at you”?'

‘That's all you've lived for ever since we met,' she heard herself shouting.

He methodically laid strips of bacon on the grill, and cracked two eggs into the smoking lard. ‘In the final analysis,' he called over his shoulder.

When, she wondered, had there been a first analysis? She didn't know what sort of wife he'd be happy with, because it was impossible to decide what kind of woman he himself was capable of making in any way content. It wasn't her. No more of that. The serrated breadknife on the table was not to be resisted. Didn't like it here.

The dazzling backplate of the electric cooker showed what he thought of as the last horror. He turned as the knife spun towards his throat.

She remembered everything as having taken place in silence, though it was conceivable that the neighbours heard the combination of shriek and bellow that came from him. The inner noise of bitter rage which forced her to spring was fit to burst all panes of glass in the house.

In spite of her speed and the spin of the weapon, he parried the thrust with an ease that astonished her. A hand made a painful chop at her elbow and sent the knife across the room. Clenched into a fist, his other hand struck her face, pushing her back and half stunning her at the same time.

She discovered, now that it was too late, that to be violent was to be kind to him. Such a life-and-death attempt was far less disturbing than when she had asked him simply to let her alone, action of any sort being the only form of reconciliation that he could understand. The truth was, he didn't want her to kill herself, or to leave home. Though she had never expressed to him her hope of one day doing so, he sensed the possibility so strongly that he liked to taunt her with the idea.

The bout was over before the bacon scorched. He sat down hungrily, though he wasn't altogether happy, in spite of eating the rind as well, because he was the sort of man who knew that whenever things looked like getting better, they got worse. He was no simpleton, and had built up his business by driving himself more intensely during the good times than in the bad. Her resort to violence seemed a hint that he ought now to relax his continual craving for work and take her out for the day, but as he sated his appetite, the conflict took on another aspect, in that he could afford to feel cheerful now that she had tried to kill him and failed. There weren't many men who'd had that to put up with before breakfast.

She couldn't live any more with the kind of person who made her pay for everything before she'd had time to enjoy what he occasionally led her to expect and never gave her. He felt it, too, and being disappointed in himself turned into a bully, which made him babyish. During twenty years she had been so busy learning about him that she had learned nothing of herself, except that much of what she had taken in concerning his character had bitten so painfully that it had become part of her. She resented such gains at the price of her soul, that had pushed her own self out of the way till she often didn't know who she was when in the same room with him, and she was never away from him long enough to begin finding out. She didn't even know who she was when she was alone, which was worse because it frightened her into believing that her memory was failing as well.

His knees were trembling, but he took his plate to the sink by walking side-on. ‘Cheer up, love! See you tonight. I'll try not to be late.'

He didn't know what was wrong, so she felt that whatever wasn't right between them could only be her fault. His eyebrows lifted, an unfailing mannerism: ‘No talkie-talkie this morning? It's not that bad, Pam, is it?' He winked: ‘Just think how lucky you are. You haven't got cancer, have you? If not, then you've nothing to worry about.'

‘Goodbye,' she said flatly.

‘You've got good clothes on your back. You aren't starving. You aren't being dive-bombed, are you? Well then, you should be grateful for it.'

‘Oh, I know,' she said. ‘I thank God for every breath I take.'

He smiled because he'd won. ‘That's better!'

The only victory is in being alive, she thought, when he went whistling out of the door. She didn't believe any good would come of giving her meagre victory to him by killing herself. Pulling the living-room curtains aside, she watched him drive on to the street. He rolled the car window down and waved. She gestured back to make sure he went away happy enough to work well and make more money, which was all he wanted out of life. He left her as usual to close the garage door when she went shopping. Steely-edged rain clouds filled the sky, drops already spitting at the privet.

2

A bottle of Golden Miracle Skin Lotion, a tin of Super-Quick Hair Eradicator, a flask of Nutritious Fast-Working Pore Food, and a jar of the most efficient Blemish Flattener that science had so far been able to concoct, broke and scattered under the hammer. A fragment of cream-coated glass hit the dressing-table mirror, and she stopped before the next swing because it seemed that her elbow was about to crumble. Blows from everywhere crossed her heart.

In all justice she had to thank George for having such a wide range of hammers. He could never resist a nice-looking red-handled claw hammer set in a row of diminishing sizes in a shop window. He had to go in and get one. If the income tax had really wanted to know how rich he was they'd have to weigh him in hammers like the Aga Khan in gold. There were probably enough in his tool shed and factory for both of them.

She threw the hammer on the bed, and put a few tubes and lipsticks into her case, then sent the rest of the trash over the carpet so that he would know something had altered in his life when he found the garage door open and the house empty.

She pulled sensible blouses, skirts and dresses out of the wardrobe, folding them into her case. Early risers have plenty of time, so she lit a cigarette, and thought of igniting what couldn't be taken. A few drops of paraffin and up it would go. ‘I don't hate myself that much,' she decided, ‘so I won't do it,' having to speak her decisions before being able to follow them with action. The thought of such a fire scorched her hands and face, and she stood back from the bed a few moments, rubbing her palms together. Then she took tights, pants, vests, bras and stockings, handkerchiefs already folded, and packed them in neatly, but lifted everything out again to lay shoes on the bottom, and fit in two of the heaviest sweaters.

She sat on the bed, cases full but not closed, failing to leave. Hadn't got this far before. What did you do? How did you do it? It was like waiting for someone to come and haul her off to prison. A better idea was to run away from the house and go over the fields, throwing off her clothes bit by bit till she was naked and could crawl into a wood, go to sleep and never wake up. It was as impossible to run away as it was to die, and felt like one and the same thing now that she was trying.

The dialling tone purred. Didn't want to take her gaze from the beige carpet. The whole day could go by, and he would come home and gently put the receiver down before pushing her on to the settee and shouting it was about time she grew up and stopped giving him such a bloody hard time. She took her parents' small black Bible from the dressing-table drawer and slipped it into her case because she had read it as a child, and the dates of births and deaths were inscribed.

‘Oh no,' she said, ‘it's not going to be like that,' and dialled a taxi, still hoping the number would be engaged or out of order. It wasn't. When the car came she was glad there was no one to say goodbye to.

3

Her two cases were near an empty platform seat, and she walked to get warm rather than go in the tea-bar waiting-room. Someone who knew her might phone George, but if by magic he came down the steps she would throw herself under the mincer of a non-stop train. She preferred to be in the cold wind where people didn't look at each other, for if they did they might see her, and she wanted above all to be invisible.

There was a smell of smoke and diesel fumes. Shining rain-needles slanted on to the rails. Her life was her own – as cold as the weather was – and no one knew better, but she felt she would never wake up from the disabling fear that made her arms tremble as if she would be unable to lift her cases. She would get them on the train herself, or not at all, had them by the edge and hoped a door would be level when the train stopped.

A station announcement, sounding like wind and marbles thrown at the roof, increased her uncertainty and dread, showing a vision of hauling cases up the steps and out of the station, getting into a taxi and setting herself for home, which made the luggage so light when the train did arrive that she threw both heavyweights up into the doorway and carried them easily to a compartment.

Twenty years of concrete crumbled from her, and she laughed while pressing her cases as far into the rack as they would go, thinking it would be a shame if one fell at some sharp jolt and knocked her brains out at this stage of her departure.

She didn't notice the train leaving the city till it had gone by the castle. Coming from the toilet she saw a middle-aged well-dressed man surrounded by expensive leather luggage near the doorway spit through the open window. He swung quickly to one side to avoid any blowback, as if he'd made the same gesture more than once. A handkerchief was also ready, and half covered his face. When he removed it and looked at her she saw a sallow complexion, dark neatly parted hair, a straight well-angled nose, and good teeth when he smiled. The scent was eau-de-cologne, and the mutual stare was short enough to give a feeling of complicity. She climbed happily over his cases as if she had drunk several tots of whisky yet did not feel giddy.

If someone asked why she had left her husband she wouldn't have said anything because the answer she had been born with was embedded like a stone, not to be pulled prematurely into the glare of day without ripping her to pieces. She had lived and breathed too long with a monster she did not know how or when had been conceived. The heart had no way of creating words and giving it birth. But some day a reason would, with time and patience, be found for the riddance of everything that had tormented her since marrying George, and which had agonized her even before that, if she faced the truth which at the moment her thoughts only hinted at.

There was nothing to do except sit. She heard herself laughing at the fathomless drop opening abruptly beneath. The only space was the compartment, luckily empty, otherwise someone might have led her away as she screamed with amusement at distances opening on every side. She gripped the arm of the seat and pressed her cheek to the cold window. To leave home, husband and son for no good reason means I'm going off my head. She wiped tears and stood to look in the mirror, to find out whether or not she was actually laughing.

She had oblique grey eyes, a tinge of blue at happy times. Too much like a bloody cat's, he had said more than once, now and again with a sentimental stare, but she'd hated her eyes for years because they had betrayed the way she felt, patience only built up and sustained by a false contentment. Her hair was long and brown, with no grey seams as yet. Maybe the grind of life had held it in suspension, and it would turn all at once now that she had left.

It was wrong to look at yourself. Before marriage there had been one mirror in the house, over the bathroom sink. The bond had broken under the strain. She saw herself anew. Her mouth was still full, lips shaped because, unlike most people she had known, she'd got her own teeth, and not yet the rabbit-grip George would have felt much easier living with. The fact of her being a few inches taller had often given him a rankling gaze. The raw bruise down her face was a memento from his fist, a reach that more than made up for his short body. If the knife had gone into his throat she would have left him by going to jail, and there would have been no mirrors there either, she imagined. If she had struck blood yet failed to kill, she would never have escaped from his life.

Lines of washing in back gardens flapped towards the place she was rapidly leaving. Clothes of all colours waved goodbye. The train was bully enough to push through any wind and to clear the clouds away, yet such free air could not disperse the ache that George still made her feel. He could crush himself from this point on. Perhaps he would even relish the chore of getting his own washing done now that she had a first-class ticket to St Pancras in her purse.

Despite pain from the mark he had given, she knew herself to be happy. When tears pushed at her eyes she could visualize his face, and reassure herself how lucky she was. The sensation wouldn't last, but would be so much better for that, providing she enjoyed it while she could, for wouldn't she, after wandering around the shops of London, and eating a nice Italian dinner in Soho, come back tonight and be in the same old bed again?

Happiness existed in a world she didn't feel close to, even though she had separated from the one that had buried her for so long. She'd try not to go back, for all this couldn't be for nothing. On her own, a certain amount of happiness would come from being in control both of herself and of the peace this gave – except that he had bruised her to make sure she would come back.

Frosty breath floated like smoke from the mouths of cows. A tractor and its plough crawled on the brown earth of a field that sloped to the close horizon. A cloud of white birds shifted behind. God was in the oil of the tractor and on the wings of every bird, as well as in the separate vapour from each placid animal. She felt the warmth of their breathing. Perhaps God did exist, since she had made her move and could not explain what else had finally given her the courage to act. She pictured Him living below the ocean, under pebbles and soil at the exact middle of the land, a God of this earth only who directed billions of lives and held the fate of everyone in His power.