Her Victory (29 page)

He prayed, and bullied, and laughed at her, and swore at himself, and cursed his bad luck, berating his lack of endurance when the pump wouldn't draw, and rocks were about to rip away the bottom of the ship on which she lay. He had made the effort with men about to peg out from drowning, and to the absolutely drowned – with undisciplined hope but diminishing strength.

In freezing air he steamed from the effort and called on God, and Clara, his father and mother, and anyone else who might listen, but most of all himself and the gassed woman under him till he heard her choke and gag and fart and bite more of the bitter cold welling in through the window. Disinclined to gentleness, he spun her halfway round the compass and hauled her with his last strength to the sill, pushing her over as if he'd had enough and would send her three decks below like a bag of dirty linen at the end of a voyage.

‘Breathe!' he shouted.

Shirt sleeves flying, he took in air for himself and held her at the window, looked out from the dead centre on a hundred and fourteen degrees of great circle bearing pointing somewhere or other but right now too much was happening to bother where such a beam might go. A man got out of a car across the street and looked up at their lovers' tiff, then shook his head and walked down the nearest basement steps as if on his way to collect a poor soul's rent.

She gasped, and retched when he forced her to the sink. ‘Fetch it up!' Only rough stuff could help in a matter of such life and death. ‘Or I'll put my hand down your throat and pull it out myself.'

‘Leave me be!' she screamed at the purple world that was killing her.

‘Ha! You've found your voice? No more blockages?' He tugged her round as if to aim a deliberate blow at a baby to get it breathing – and sent her spinning into the room. ‘Don't try and put one over on me, or I'll hand you over to the plumbers!'

He was so much the old sort that he hardly knew himself. He hadn't left it behind, after all. Should have known better than to think so. Wouldn't it come whenever needed? You couldn't save a life and follow the niceties of polite behaviour.

The whizz-bang circled her head, and the carpet she tasted was not her own. She was in London. A madman had broken into her room. She'd had a nightmare but couldn't remember lock, latch or hinges bursting. Yet the door had come open. He tried to throw her out of the window. Water was pounding into a sink, laughter above everything. He'd made her sick. A pillar of bile had rammed to her stomach and she retched it out, sent it flying. Arms, legs and teeth shook from cold. A star ate into her forehead, while a hammer beat at the bones behind. The star burned. She choked. She had eaten pepper, chewed salt. She looked at grey rods and silver wires. I wanted to sleep. She tried to close her eyes but the burning rods forced them open. Knees came to her chin. What happened? You may bloody well ask, she heard.

He cleaned the sink and filled it. ‘Get up.'

‘Who are you?' She couldn't see him.

‘You'll know, soon enough.'

She smelled sweat when he came close. ‘Don't kill me, George.'

His laugh wasn't George's. Never could be, a sound from somebody caught in a trap she'd had nothing to do with. He exulted in his separation from civilized entanglements. The metal grip shook from her eyes.

‘Stand up,' he barked, ‘or I'll
half
-kill you.'

She tried. He saw that she couldn't. She was lifted, and supported in a walk across the room, her head pushed into a block of ice. She screamed from shock. That's better. Bubbles burst, then floated. He was torturing her, holding her head under water. She kicked him, arms pounding at cloth and bone. She was pulled by the hair.

‘No brain damage.' He sounded gleeful, had saved more than he'd hoped for. Her feet kicked against ankle. A hand swung at her wet cheek and pushed her once more into the freezing mist. She might have known that George would catch her. Wrong again. He had paid his brothers' friends to kill her. Never took on his own dirty work. The water leaped at her face till she felt him get tired.

‘Thank God.' He sat her in an armchair, and took a clean towel from the cupboard. ‘Dry yourself. You might be all right. But no funny business.'

Vision was scarlet, changing to a steel grid, shaking into interchange. The pink face was surrounded by red. He lived in blood. Hands and legs would not stop rattling. Pieces of wood clattered, and a gong was calling the world to dinner, sonorously behind both eyes. She talked, but heard him say:

‘Can't make out a word.'

‘I want to sleep,' she roared.

His ear was against her lips, and he heard faintly.

‘I'll tell you when you can go to sleep.'

He pulled her upright, too exhausted to be gentle. ‘Walk. First this foot. And now the other. Left-right, left-right, left-right. Come on!'

‘Don't shout.'

He didn't hear.

She stepped obediently, pushing against a cliff of indifference. She dropped.

‘I can't go on.'

He caught her. She walked the room and back, then fell off the wall. He sat her down. No use. They spoke together, but neither heard. He put a kettle of water on the stove, not knowing what else to do. Then he walked her again. Shouting and cajoling, he was remorseless. He moved her at the waist, pushed her, walked her again until she clutched at the ceiling and heard a whistle that became a scream of pain. She sat while he turned the gas off and put six tablespoons of coffee into the pot. After water, the lid went on, and he walked her again.

The treadmill was unendurable. ‘I hate you.'

‘Walk,' he said, ‘or you really will go out of the window – without a bloody parachute.'

She walked, though. ‘I tried to …'

She was inching back to life. He felt wasted to nothing, yet hadn't known such elation since the war, when perils came fast enough to stop youth dead in its tracks – when youth was the ideal state to be in. Brought a whiff of it back, cordite and salt water. ‘Yes, I know. I know all about it.'

‘Free country,' she said.

Bald, ugly, freckled, she saw him laugh. No devil without cruelty. ‘Tell me some more,' he said, ‘it's good for you.'

‘It's a free country.'

He laughed.

‘Stop laughing.'

‘So it is,' he said. ‘Free as air. You do what you like, and I do what I like. God works in many ways his wonders to perform, even in a free country.'

‘I don't like it here. And I don't like you.'

He held her, wouldn't let go. ‘Talk, then you'll have to walk less.'

‘I don't want to.' Stone on a piece of rope kept banging the back of her head. She asked him to cut it loose. She'd ask anyone if they were here. She told him. He didn't care.

‘Maybe you're going to live, after all.'

‘I shan't do it.'

At the stove he poured hot stuff into mugs. He put spoons of white powder in. He was going to poison her. She ran at him but didn't move. She told him not to kill her, but instead of her lips moving she felt more tears wetting her cheeks. He put white powder into his own mug as well, but it wouldn't kill him, she was certain.

‘I want to go back,' she heard herself saying.

He turned. ‘You tried to kill yourself, and that's your business. It's my business to bring you out of it. You're staying here till you're all right, and afterwards, if you still want to chuck yourself off the world, it's up to you.'

He hoped she wouldn't. But she was over twenty-one, and that was a fact. He snapped at the plug chain, and water ran out of the sink. She nodded. He was asking something. He couldn't stand up, and shouted. He was insane. He was in a fit when he said: ‘I wonder if you could lend …'

She was alarmed. His head swayed left and right. Some new horror was about to be manufactured by his mad but versatile mind.

His laughter subsided, but silence gave him a dignity that didn't fit. ‘I was going to ask if by any chance … you haven't some sugar in your room?'

It was impossible to know what he meant or would do. She nodded. He was concerned about a matter which frightened her. He would murder her if she didn't escape. The light pushed like a flame against her eyes.

‘Where is it?'

She tried to explain, but couldn't tell what he wanted. He seemed to understand. She saw him as dead – and deaf as well as ugly. She wouldn't return to George no matter how much he tormented her.

‘Don't fall while I'm away.'

He returned with half a loaf of bread, some butter and cheese, and a packet of sugar, reasoning that with such a full cupboard she couldn't have considered knocking herself out for ever – unless she had been too dead-set on it to care.

She was asleep, and he asked himself, putting spoons of sugar into each mug, and whisky into hers, whether he should call a doctor. He helped her to her feet. ‘Come on, more walking along the deck. You're all right' – wishing to God she was – ‘so twice to the window for a ten-fathom breather, then back to the coffee pot for a sniff at the bean.'

‘Don't like it here.'

‘Oh yes, you will, or I'll knock you for six.'

He held her waist, fearful that she might fall, that she'd faint and never recover.

She hated him.

‘Why?'

And she hated him even more when he laughed, and said: ‘I owe you some sugar. I'll repay every grain.'

Impossible to comprehend. He led her to the seat. She clutched the mug for warmth, and drank blackjack coffee, watching him. At the mirror he fastened cufflinks, adjusted his tie, and put on a jacket. A comb from his wallet went through hair around his head, though she didn't see any.

‘A sailor likes to look spick and span.'

‘Sailor?'

‘First officer – but harmless. I only came on earth to stop you doing yourself a fatal injury. Thank God for what's left of my sweet tooth.' He spread a cloth, and opened sardines over the sink. Knives and forks were in order. Two plates of different shapes and colours drifted from a shelf. He cut bread, split cellophane from biscuits, and set the kettle wailing again. She forgot where she was, and what she'd done or had done to her. Why was she here, in another room? A man was putting a meal on the table in as quick and neat a way as she had ever been able to manage.

Rather mannish and thin-faced, there was something good-looking about her, except that her eyes were bloodshot and her face whitewashed. ‘Sorry there aren't any flowers. No funeral today. Let's go once more to the fresh-air box.'

She stood. ‘I don't want to.'

But he led her. ‘After six good breaths, we'll risk shutting it.'

He closed the door, slammed down the window. ‘Do you think you can sit at the table?'

She tried to speak while he lit the paraffin stove, but her chin rested on her chest, mouth open. ‘You're not very good-looking like that, though.'

He gripped her arms and shook, held her up. She sat like a sack of onions, he said. ‘If you don't feel well, let me know. Be a pity if you fell and broke an arm after all this – or chucked up over my best bed.'

She longed to sleep in her own room until death came, or the headache stopped. A fire rampaged behind her eyes. She sat upright, facing him. He fed her pieces of bread and butter. ‘Welcome aboard! The ship's all yours – while we're floating along.'

Coffee tasted like boiled straw. One minute she knew how she had got here, and the next she didn't. She wanted to go to sleep and find out, and then to forget why she had. He'd prevent her because he liked tormenting people, as if she had done him harm (though if she had, she'd forgotten about any incident she'd been through with him in times gone past) and he wanted to make her pay. Like any man, he was unrelenting and unforgiving, and she resented him eating as if the effort of stopping her going to sleep when she wasn't strong enough to fight back gave him an appetite. Then she remembered having lain down by the gas. Couldn't say why. She bit into some bread. Wanted to go to sleep and find the answer, but would she get it?

He talked, seeing that she could not, and believing that silence would be the death of her. He told her who he was, and what he knew of his life. She wouldn't remember. But he talked his snotty drivel, as if she were fully alert, to make her grey unseeing eyes stay open, to stop her head dropping into the borrowed sugar, and to help more food and coffee – however little – into her mouth.

When he handed her a corner of biscuit with cheese, she took it like someone with neither sense nor feeling, and ate as if she were made of glass and he could see the crumbs and flakes going down through her body, the ultimate state of shame and embarrassment like one of those dreams in which you were caught walking naked in the street. She wanted to hide from him who thought he could stare at her: just because she wasn't able to respond for the moment. Didn't like him. She floated as if she were drunk. She felt like a baby which, though hungry, wanted most of all to sleep.

Her nose ran. She couldn't feel it. Her lips threatened to stop moving. He trembled for himself. How could a strong enough woman like this try to get off the world before it shot her loose in its own good time? There was no saying. Maybe only the strong ones did it. He wanted her to fasten her shirt but was too shy to do so or ask. There was gooseflesh on her white chest, and an odour of skin from the faintest swell which was visible. The only procedure he knew was to keep her going till she dropped. He felt he'd need more sleep himself after this, though supposed an hour's dose of air in Holland Park would get him lively. The coffee and food fuelled his talk.

When her eyes flickered in acknowledgement of some half-lost phrase he wondered what was in her mind. ‘Are you feeling better now?'

‘Help me.'

He caught her before she fell. ‘You'll be all right after a day or two.'