Her Victory (53 page)

‘I'll give you some tea if you sit down. Where's lover-boy? Sam, open that drawer and get Mrs Hargreaves' letter, will you?' She scooped stuff onto three plates, and set them on the table.

‘Can't find it,' Sam said.

She pulled him away. ‘Incompetent bloody male! Get your tea, then, and let
me
look.'

‘You bollocks,' Sam said, flinching. ‘You're always on at me, especially when somebody else is in the room.'

He wants a father, but Pam daren't say it aloud. ‘I'll come down later. It can't be that vital.'

Judy began to eat. ‘We had your husband here after you flitted with Tom. He came twice, in fact, then left the letter with me before going back up to Nottingham.'

‘He gave me a pound note for sweets,' Sam shouted. ‘I like him.'

‘I'm not surprised you packed him in.' Judy carved bread. ‘I hope your sailor-bloke's a bit better. I didn't like George's mood when he left.'

She wants to start an argument, Pam thought, but felt sorry for her. A half-way sympathetic man would certainly make her happier than she is now. He would have to be strong to deal with the children, and willing to allow her a girl-friend now and again. She supposed that if by any chance he existed, the possibility of them meeting was a long way this side of nil. She put an arm over her shoulder. ‘It was nice in Brighton. Perhaps you'll come down some time.' She and Tom would pay their fares, and entertain them for the day. They'd lay on food, or go to the beach for a picnic.

‘I can't imagine anybody bothering with a gang like us,' Judy said wearily. ‘If these two go anywhere nice they take the place apart.'

‘Tom will see they don't.'

‘We'll go out with George,' Sam said. ‘He promised to take us somewhere.'

‘To the Waxworks,' said Hilary.

Judy brought the saucepan to the table for second helpings. ‘Don't bank on it.'

‘He gave me a pound note as well.' Hilary held out her plate. ‘Will he come back soon, mum?'

Judy banged the pan in the middle of the table, and raged: ‘Be quiet, both of you, or I'll throw you into the street.'

Pam recalled how good George could be with children. Edward had adored him, up to the age when he realized that his father was merely living his own childhood again through him. George made it as perfect a childhood as love and money could, but Edward wanted only to be left alone, presumably, Pam thought, because with George anticipating all his desires he found it impossible to know what kind of person he was likely to grow into.

‘Well,' Sam said, ‘he
was
nice. He gave you twenty pounds, mum. I saw it on the shelf after he left.'

Judy smacked him across the face, though the blow lacked her usual gusto. ‘I told you to keep your mouth shut about that, didn't I?'

‘I'll leave home,' he said, ‘if you do that again.'

‘I can't wait.'

Pam felt as if she herself had been struck. ‘You mean he slept with you?'

‘Doesn't matter to you, does it?'

‘Oh no. Certainly not.'

‘He looked as if he was dying with misery,' Judy said after a while, ‘so I asked him to share our supper. One thing led to another. He was too upset for me to be of much use, but I managed to soothe him in the end, which is probably why he was so generous. He needn't have been, for all I cared.'

‘Twenty's a lot of money,' Sam said.

Pam had nothing to say except: ‘When did he leave?'

‘Three days ago. But I wouldn't be surprised if he came back. Men usually do, before they go away for good. They hate you, but can't leave you alone.'

‘Aren't all men different?' Pam asked.

‘Yes, they are. But they're all the same, as well.'

Pam stood. ‘Burn the letter if you find it. That's what I'll do with it, after all.'

Judy took it out of the drawer. ‘You'd better have the bloody thing.'

She put the envelope into her handbag. ‘Thank you for holding it.'

‘No hard feelings?' Judy seemed miserable, and it wasn't necessary in the least, Pam thought, saying: ‘No, none, really,' though finding it difficult to say anything comforting. ‘We'll be off tomorrow, or the next day at the latest.'

‘Are you sure about going away with Tom?'

‘Absolutely.'

She cleared the table. ‘That doesn't sound very sure. It's too definite. See me before you go, though. I'll want a goodbye kiss and a hug.'

Pam went upstairs thinking how gloomy the place was, but on going into her room felt a tremor of affection for her refuge. She put her bag down and lit the fire, no time between the first hiss and pushing in the match-flame. There was a smell of ice and decaying whitewash. A noise next door caused dread till she remembered who made it. When he put on the radio there was music. The house seemed inhabited and safe. She set a kettle on the stove. Under her happiness was an apprehension that she could not explain. There was no reason, which made it worse. She breathed deeply and became calm, yet the anxiety persisted.

She took George's letter from her handbag, and began to read. ‘You are a prostitute, and I'll get my own back for all you've done to me. I hung around waiting to see you, but you had gone off with that bastard, whoever he is. I spotted you, and you wouldn't look at me, but I'll get you for it, doing it on me after all I've done for you, and looked after you all these years. You don't know right from wrong, or you went off your head, I don't know which. Or you just wanted to lead a life that you'd hankered for all your life. Or maybe you'd been doing it before you left, while I was at work. I didn't know. I wouldn't, would I? How could I? But I do ask myself why we had to be married twenty years before you show your true colours. I can't think why, and I wonder if you can. I do know though that if you want to come back you can, and I'll forget all about what you have done to me. I love you, you know that, and always shall. I always did, didn't I? I only want to live with you because life's not worth living without you. I don't know why, but it isn't. I haven't told Ted (Edward) yet that you've left me, but I said you had gone to stay for a time in London. So when you come back he'll never know you've been away. I wouldn't like him to, even though he is nineteen now. He won't think much of me if he gets to know. So if you come back it'll be the same as it was, except I'll take you out more. There's a new nightclub just opened down town, and we can go there. Business is good at the moment, I don't know why because it doesn't seem good everywhere else. I've got a new secretary and she's a real worker and looks after things fine. So how about it? If you give me a ring I'll be down to fetch you, or you can come up on the train if you like. I don't mind. You always did as you liked. I can't wait to see you again. It seems years, but it's not much more than a couple of months. You'd do well to come back though, I'm telling you, because if you don't you'll be leading the sort of life that'll
do you in
, because I know you, and when it does don't come crawling back to me. That's why I say you'd better come now, because that'd be best, and try to make up for all you've done, because if you don't I'll give you no peace. I want you back, I know that, and you know it, and if you don't you ought to, so you have got to come, and if you don't, me and my brothers will come and give you a good talking to, and you know what that means. And if we see that bloke of yours he won't be much to look at after we have finished with him. He can't do what he's doing to
our
family and get away with it. He's playing with fire doing what he's doing to us, so if you've got any sense and don't want anything to happen to you or him you'll pack up and get the next train north, and if you'll phone me beforehand I'll be at the station in the car to meet you. Believe me, it'll be the greatest day of my life because I love you and have never loved anybody else, and never shall. So pack up and come back to me, there's a good girl. I'll be waiting for you. I'll never love anybody else. Love. Love. Love. George.'

The paper shook. Better to have followed her instinct and burned it. She understood why Tom had wanted to do the same with his trash. George would not accept that there was no going back, nor know that she did not live in his world anymore.

She shivered from cold. His letter paralysed her spirit. Anguish set her trembling because he was part of a trap from which escape was impossible. She had gone from him, but his refusal to realize just how far terrified her. The singlemindedness that had set him up in business was now beamed on her, threatening to pull her back into his tyranny and madness. His hungering drive would last for ever. She didn't know where to go. She was her own free self, but he would drive her from any safe place.

She took a carving knife out of the drawer, and ran her finger along the blade too lightly to cut the skin. It would thrust itself into her. She was afraid, and put it back, intending to throw the vile thing away, or give it to Judy with other belongings that she wouldn't take with her. She would deal with George without a knife. The shriek of the kettle startled her back to the life she had forgotten. Music on the other side of the wall reminded her. They would start getting their few things together, and be away by tomorrow. She dreaded any unexpected delays.

She made two cups of tea and took them to his room. He leaned over a sheet of paper, still wearing his overcoat and hat. She wasn't sure he had heard her. His pen shaped a black curve to join a half-line of dots and angles, symbols fixed as if they had been cut out with scissors and stuck there.

‘Keeps me warm,' he said, ‘coming into a freezing room. It seemed natural to light the stove, draw the curtains, and copy a sentence as if I wanted to send a letter to my mother or my grandmother. Maybe I'm writing to myself. It's like learning for the first time, straight from the heart.'

She stood and watched. ‘What does it mean?'

He read the translation. ‘Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has kept us in life, and has preserved us, and has enabled us to reach this season.'

‘Beautiful.' Her hand was on his shoulder for comfort. ‘We want a new life, and a new way of seeing things – or a new way of looking at the old things that gives them fresh warmth and love.' She had felt it for as long as she could remember, but had never told herself until now.

He pushed the papers aside, and returned the pen to his pocket. ‘You're part of these letters because you persuaded me to search that roomful of stuff, when I really was about to throw it out. You began the process that can't be reversed, so I never want to be away from you.'

She kissed his hands. ‘They write such beautiful letters!'

‘I saw a page of manuscript on parchment that shines and dazzles,' he told her, ‘which must have taken weeks to copy. When I was in the orphanage we had to read the Bible every day. For years I didn't like the sections dealing with a man who was said to have died on a cross for my sins. I couldn't believe that such an event could have anything to do with me. Somebody had got it all wrong, I thought. My sins are my own, such as they might be, and God will either forgive them or he won't. But it's up to God, not the man who was killed by the Romans on a cross – a piece of barbarism of which the twentieth century has more examples than any other. I could believe in God, and those parts of the Bible which weren't about Jesus. It seemed that God had already had a lot to do with my life, if things had any explanation at all. The so-called Old Testament stories made sense. I had a good memory and learned whole chapters, though I later forgot them. In the navy I hardly opened the Bible, except in some hotel when I might – if I was sober – read a few verses before going to sleep. Later I carried one with me from ship to ship, until somebody walked off with it. It's strange to realize that much of it was written in the script I'm learning to write, and that one of the books which came from my mother is the first five books of the Bible in Hebrew.'

‘They're part of
you
,' she said.

She sat opposite, did not care to say anything without thinking first. It was no use blurting the words so as to save the anguish of a decision. Those days must surely be over. She must trust herself to say whatever came to her, otherwise there was no way of knowing whether the thought was false or not. She had surfaced after a life under water, and felt the miasma of self-deception clearing. If what she said meant nothing to him, then her words were at least justified by what was in her heart.

They had seemed more united in his aunt's flat, together but without that seriousness which, in the cold rooms of this half-way house, pushed them apart. She no longer pertained to herself. Nor did he belong to himself. Neither were they primarily attached to each other. Yet even to think so implied a more than possible unity. They belonged to this world but were detached from it, though only by such feelings of separation could the real connection ultimately be made. It had to start somewhere. ‘I'm in love with you,' she said simply.

He couldn't tell her that he had never heard a woman say so before, but was silent with a silence that was also part of her, just as she thought that her silence must by now belong to him. He shook himself, as if he had been asleep. His eyes showed an exhausted spirit, that seemed to have received an unendurable shock. She had said that she loved him, and he tried to smile, wondering when she would say it again.

8

She was in a wood but sunlight flowed between black-and-yellow trunks, smooth and tall with no leaves or branches visible. Her head wouldn't turn upwards to look. There were bushes and flowers, and gnarled roots half covered with soil that hindered her walk. Sleep showed as if through a window. Her dream, packed on to the head of a pin before it pricked and woke her, kept out the cold. The sunlight was still hot between the trees, and something was about to happen. She stroked one of the trunks, and caressed the mark of its Hebrew letter. Her tongue went forward, and a root at her foot became a cat which nudged her ankle and leapt up the tree before she could touch. She walked a straight line between trees till sunlight drew off, and darkness came. A muffled bang sounded far away as she was climbing, an easy ascent to follow the light, going towards the inside of an umbrella that had a hole where the centre should have been, floating weightlessly up the inner funnel of a parachute without any thought for the earth, arms and fingers straight above her head so that she could steer through and into a light that would last for ever.