Her Victory (63 page)

Near Boulogne he followed signs for the port, and she wondered whether he had forgotten something in England that was important enough to go back for. If they made the crossing, she would feel Judy's warm kiss, and tell her how full of uncertainty she was, how far afloat in spaces she did not understand, how lost among forces still incomprehensible. She would find comfort, even if only in talking for a few hours about things that didn't much matter. It had taken her a long time to learn that one woman could mother another and call it friendship, and at the moment that's all she wanted.

They were not going to England, but joined a queue by a railway line set apart from the
quai
. ‘We put our car on the train,' he said, ‘and in the morning wake up in Italy!'

The heat burned into the car. They stood outside, and there was no breeze. She strolled to the end of the queue, wondering how to get a ticket and go back on the next ship whether he came or not. She could be with Judy by evening. She could be in London by tomorrow, and in Nottingham the day after that. She opened her bag. There was enough English money. But there was nowhere for her to go, nowhere she wanted to go to, only someone she needed without knowing why. It had become unthinkable not to be with him.

As if knowing what she thought, he left her alone. He would think the same. He stood, smoking a cigar, looking at long wagons on to which he would drive the car before they took their seats in the carriage. Their tickets were checked. The train was half an hour late in leaving, and he cursed the heat. A man in front cooled himself with a folded newspaper. Cars began to move. She watched him drive up the ramp. She had made her choice. On the way down, carrying their overnight suitcase, he didn't get low enough under a girder, and bumped his head. When he swore she laughed.

6

He held her hand. ‘Let's get on board.'

They leaned back in their seats and dozed, taken smoothly from the coast. By half-past five the train was east of Paris, stopped under a sunny sky among green fields, woods and orchards, with low hills in the distance. A halted train opposite was full of Spaniards, one of whom called out that they had come from Belgium and were going home on holiday. The heat was uncomfortable. A young Englishman understood Spanish, and translated what was said. There was a lot of unemployment in Belgium, they told him.

Pam was thirsty, and they went to the restaurant car. Tea and cakes cost five pounds, and she called it extravagance. ‘Blame the exchange rate,' he said. The train rolled south and south-east. He took out a cloth map to show where they were. His grandfather's signature was on the hardboard cover: ‘But the railway lines are the same.'

Window glass reflected their faces when it got dark. Inactivity made her sleepy. The noise and rattle was soporific. With darkness outside it seemed like travelling through an endless tunnel. They would never hit daylight again and see landscape. She would doze for ever, while Tom assiduously studied a multilingual phrase-book.

On her way from the toilet she opened the window of an outside door and heard the rush of wheels. If she unlatched the door and slipped she would be sucked underneath. The difference between life and death was a thrusting forward of the body, a twist of the foot. Even if there was nothing else to do she would never do it. Such impulses made life seem valuable.

‘I thought you'd got lost,' he said.

‘I was standing by myself. One has to now and again. I might not be able to for much longer.'

He closed his book, wondering what she meant.

‘It sounds idiotic,' she said, ‘and impossible perhaps, but I think I'm pregnant. I haven't had a period for two months. Either that, or it's something worse. But I don't think so. I've been as sick as a dog the last few mornings.'

He hadn't noticed. He should have done, he said. She'd mentioned it, but neither had made the connection. They hadn't cared to. Neither had she – until now. So what else could the poor bloke do but smile? Pull the communication cord? He asked if she were sure. Who would be till it popped out? But the signs were there. It's incredible, she said. I'm forty-one. She had lived in a dream and taken no pills. Maybe she was mistaken, but it had been impossible not to mention in this timeless train driving through nowhere. He was happy, she supposed, and certainly wouldn't mind. She wondered whether there was any occurrence he would be disturbed at. If not, it was just as well.

He hoped it was true, he said. He could think of nothing better, leaned across to hold her and say he was sorry there was no one else in the compartment to hear the good news. He loved her, he said.

‘At least we can kiss in peace.' If I'm pregnant, she thought, you should take me home. Ought that not to be his first consideration? If he could not get himself to take her home, at least he might say that he would like to. Was he daft, dead, or made of iron? He was unaware of the problem. They were light years apart. She had invented a reason for returning to England, but he hadn't fallen for it. All the same, it seemed she was pregnant, and she was glad they couldn't turn round and go back the way they had come.

At dinner they shared a table with the fair-haired young man who had translated the Spaniards' talk. His name was Aubrey, and he was going to Italy on a three months' tour, he said. In the autumn he would work in his father's car insurance firm. Next year he'd marry, get a house in Boreham Wood, and travel to town every day. Yes, he was looking forward to it. Whatever happened, however trivial, was an adventure. He was philosophical: there was no such thing as an ordinary life. Dullness was in the heart of the beholder. England was a wonderful country, but he liked being on the Continent, as well. When he had a family he would buy a caravan and go touring. He ordered his dinner in excellent French, and called for a bottle of wine, saying he couldn't sleep on a train unless he was half sloshed. Tom, agreeing it was the best thing, asked for champagne.

‘Celebration?' He looked at Pam.

‘Not particularly,' Tom said. ‘I have a liking for it.'

Pam was surprised at her appetite. Something to throw up in the morning. For a train meal it was good. Tom insisted that Aubrey share their bottle. They drank to themselves and to each other, to every letter in the alphabet, never to meet again. Tom was, Pam thought, used to such encounters, which is why he'll never let me go. The idea frightened her, but it was a fear that came out of love. There was no firmer treaty. With both parties willing, what hope of parting?

Perhaps they were too unlike ever to part. Similar people repel each other, like brother and sister, and generate negative energy, whereas different people attract, and create a good – or at least positive – flow between them. She couldn't think of a better reason why they were still together, and felt so relaxed that she didn't want to. Maybe it was the drink, the sacred wine affecting the spine and brain.

Tom told Aubrey about his life at sea, and ordered another bottle. ‘An average of one each isn't excessive,' he said, but Pam drank little, and felt tipsy enough on that. They stayed till all others had gone, and the staff were impatient. They shook hands and exchanged addresses. Tom said he and Pam were touring around, with no definite itinerary. Maybe we'll collide at the same night-spot in the next week or two. Aubrey staggered, and apologized for being drunk. ‘That second brandy,' he admitted, ‘did for me.' Pam thought him a nice, English sort of person.

Tom guided her along the swaying train. She confessed that she too felt pissed, but he laughed and said he would let her sleep it off tonight. The attendant had put down their beds, and they undressed in the small space. Naked, he reached out to kiss her. She still had her pants on, and wondered: What if I start in the night? A packet of tampons was under her pillow.

The train swayed at a hundred miles an hour, then stopped at a station, voices shouting up and down the line, white lights shining through slits in the blind. The carriages juddered, started to move, stopped, then rolled almost without noise so that her brain felt as if it had a steel ratchet fixed there for the whole train to go through. She slept, and did not sleep. It was impossible to say what was sleep and what wasn't.

The attendant was to waken them at six, but she was dressed by half-past five, unable to get into even the shallowest layer of rest. Tom slept on the top bunk. Her bladder seemed about to burst. There was daylight behind the blinds, but she didn't want to lift them and wake him. Her breath was vinous and foul.

She came back and cleaned her teeth, then went along the corridor to the door-window. Other people were awake. Aubrey whistled to himself, and didn't notice her when he passed in his pyjamas. She flattened against the wall to let him by. The sky was clear. The train stopped, showed station buildings of beige walls and red roofs, and luminous vegetation. There was the overwhelming sound of birds. We'll wake up in Lombardy, Tom had said. A package tour to Rimini had been nothing like this. She smiled with pleasure at travelling with a lover, instead of a husband who had always despised himself for liking her.

The wayside station was nondescript, yet exotic. If they stayed in the nearest village what would their life be like? Couldn't imagine. An elderly man who stood on the platform some way from other people wore a grey suit, a panama hat, a flowered shirt and smart tie, and held a briefcase. He crossed the line to their train, but a station official called roughly that this was not the right one and that the train to Milan would be in soon. Or so she assumed. The man took the brusque words with dignity, and went back to where he had first stood. She wondered where he could be going at six on Sunday morning.

She let up the blinds. Tom's voice was half-way between a growl and a moan. ‘Oh my God, where am I?'

‘You may well ask,' she said. ‘But I'm not surprised you don't know.'

He looked down, and reached for her stomach. ‘Is it true?'

‘I hope so, though I don't think I'd hope so with anyone else but you.'

He let himself down from the bunk. ‘What a stupendous thing to happen!'

He didn't know what he was in for, but she let him say it, because he had never been into that area of life. ‘Wait and see,' she said with a smile.

She went out to make room while he dressed. He was there to look after her. She'd be safe with him, he said. But she felt bloody sick. What else could he say? She wanted to be by herself, get on to land and traipse across country she had never seen, walking and thinking, then walking but not thinking, to enjoy the flowers and trees, and watch the slowly changing view hour by hour and day by day, stopping when she liked, wandering like a mad woman between Alps and Lowlands, burned by sun and saturated by rain, but always alone, and when the first pains struck she would either live or die till she could be no more alone.

The train ran south through the shabby outskirts of Milan. He stood at the door with the overnight case between his feet. Red scrawl marks on walls were passed too quickly to be read. Hoardings and advertisements exhorted them to buy cars, sewing-machines, typewriters, essential goods and gewgaws that would save them time from the labours of life which, though they might not know what to do when they had saved such time, must nevertheless be saved. She thought of the labour-saving gadgets in her own long-gone house, and reflected that time thus conserved had in fact been all too often time lost in dreaming of what she would do with time saved if she had been really free. And now that she was, it didn't matter any more.

They were given vouchers to get breakfast at the station restaurant. At half-past six the air was already hot as they walked with other passengers to the main hall. The restaurant was barred from within and picketed without by a line of waiters offering leaflets to explain their complaints. They were good-natured, even regretful at the inconvenience, and none of the travellers seemed particularly thwarted by their strike.

‘We'll find a place to eat on the motorway,' Tom said.

Some people walked to a kiosk on the pavement which was doing a trade in coffee and a sort of cake-bread. Tom elbowed his way forward. ‘Hit the capitalist system in one place,' he observed, ‘and somebody else steps in to take advantage. It's very resilient.'

She stood by the railway buffers while he went along the catwalk and got into the car. He came off and circled the yard, then stopped to rearrange luggage and bring a packet of maps to the glove box.

7

She was amused at his punctilious fastening of the safety belt. Did he expect to escape if the car turned into a ball of flame? He was sensible to take precautions. As a man he no doubt wanted to live for ever, but for herself – the next car coming either had her name on it or it hadn't. If it did, her worries were over; if it didn't, they were yet to come.

A grey flower passed, or a black flower pounced. Air heated her elbow at the open window. ‘Keep your arm in that position for half an hour,' he warned, ‘and it'll be cooked three layers down.'

She drew it in. Learn step by step and brick by brick. ‘Where do we go?'

‘Back.'

‘I'm never going
back
.'

He smiled. ‘But gradually. Home again.'

I have no home. ‘Why change our plans?'

He pointed out roads as if he had been on them before. He hadn't. But the map was clear, and coloured, although signposts were more visible from her passenger seat. On the motorway insane drivers at their steering wheels were set to overtake, or die if they couldn't. She had a near view of their faces. They had stumbled on to a Sunday morning hippodrome to rehearse the national sport for the bigger mayhem of midweek. She was beset by roars, revs, hooting, smoke and eye-bludgeoning from different shapes and colours of metal motor-cars that went by like rockets. Yet the faces of the drivers seemed remarkably relaxed.