Life Class

by Pat Barker

  As the music started to play again, they laughed and waved and set off, slowly at first as the man went from horse to horse collecting fares, then faster, rising and falling, rising and falling. They seemed at one point to ride him down, Elinor straight ahead, unseeing, as he slipped and fell under the hooves. He was shivery, too hot and too cold at once, the awful warm gassy beer lying heavy on his stomach. He would wait for them to get off, he decided, then find somewhere to sit down. For a moment, he stopped looking at the horses and gazed through them to the other side. A man stood there, a tall man with a ginger moustache and a hat pulled down low over his eyes. What little could be seen of his face was a beaten bronze mask, expressionless in the light of the naphtha flares. Paul stared. The man stared back at him. He was alone, which seemed odd, but then perhaps he was waiting, as Paul was, for somebody to get off the ride. Aware that his stare was becoming confrontational, Paul made a deliberate effort to switch his gaze away. A second later, unable to help himself, he looked back and the man had gone, but so suddenly Paul was left wondering whether there’d ever been anybody there at all. It was all this nonsense with Teresa, he told himself. He’d spent so long staring at shadows, he was starting to imagine things.

  By now he was feeling rather ill, but determined not to let it spoil the evening. The ride seemed to go on for ever, but at last he felt Elinor’s hand on his arm. He bought more beer because it was his turn, but the more he drank the worse he felt. They tried the Hall of Mirrors next, Elinor gazing at her reflection in the distorting glass, now tall, now short, now fat, now thin, all arms and legs one minute, all head the next. Like Alice in Wonderland. She even looked like Alice, with that short full skirt and her hair tied back with ribbon. Almost doll-like. He felt a spasm of dislike that came from nowhere and did nothing to lessen his desire.

  Outside again, he said, ‘Do you mind if I sit down a bit? I’ll just be over there by the bandstand.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Elinor’s face, looking up at him, seemed scarcely less distorted than her reflections had been. ‘I’ll be fine. I’m just feeling a little bit sick, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s the beer,’ Abbott said, gloomily. ‘I’ve never tasted anything like it.’

  They went off to the Ghost Train, and Paul started pushing through the crowd towards the sound of a brass band. He felt adrift, disconnected from everybody and everything. Perhaps he should stop seeing Teresa. At the moment he seemed to be in a state where he was happy neither with her nor without her.

  Despite the blaring music, the bandstand was a peaceful place. Many of the seats were empty. All around crowds of people surged from one attraction to the next. Sweaty faces under funny hats; fat men fanning themselves with handkerchiefs; children carried high above the crowds, their white, skinny legs clasped in their fathers’ meaty fists. A stench of horse dung, leather, petrol fumes, raw, wet earth, trampled grass. Everywhere, couples, some of them now beginning to leave the fairground to look for peace and quiet, passion rather, under the trees. He felt a swell of yearning for Elinor or Teresa or … No, no, no, neither of them, for some anonymous girl he could pick up by the swings and take outside and never see again.

  The band were playing a military march: ‘Men of Harlech’. He sat down and listened and after a while he did start to feel better. Probably Abbott was right. It was the beer, and he hadn’t had anything to eat. Perhaps he should get something. A bag of chips would do. When the band took a break, he stood up intending to buy some food, but as he turned to go, his attention was caught by reflections in a tuba. Distorted figures, chairs, caravans. He shifted his weight from side to side and the images changed. A face loomed up behind his face in the shining metal, and, ashamed of the childish game he’d been caught playing, he turned away.

  He sensed that he was being followed. Almost as if some menacing doppelgänger had jumped out of the tuba and was pursuing him. Paul slowed down, striving to appear unconcerned. He felt if he showed any sign of fear the other would feed on it. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that it was the tall man with the ginger moustache, the man he had not yet allowed himself to call Halliday The other slowed too, marching in step. What a ridiculous situation. Paul wanted to get away, but he didn’t want to go too far from the bandstand, since he’d arranged to meet Abbott and the girls here.

  Oh, to hell with it. He turned on his pursuer. He wasn’t as tall as he’d seemed from a distance, but he was powerfully built. He wouldn’t be easy to take on. If it came to that – at the moment he was grinning. A flush of anger prickled Paul’s face and chest. ‘Do I know you?’

  Eyes like polished black pebbles. ‘No, but we’ve got a fair bit in common. You’re fucking my wife.’

  So this was it. Halliday It was nothing like he’d expected. In the early days when he’d imagined meeting Teresa’s husband, he’d envisaged a short, sharp, violent encounter in the basement or the street outside her flat. Leave my wife alone, you bastard. THUMP. Instead, here he was, not ten inches away, showing his teeth. Grinning. Paul walked away. He didn’t want a fight – he needed to feel right was on his side before he could hit out, and it was difficult to feel that here. Teresa was married to this man. He strode along, weaving his way through the crowd, knowing Halliday was close behind. Without warning, he lunged forward and grasped Paul’s arm. Paul stopped immediately, making no attempt to pull away. He was close enough to see the hairs in Halliday’s nostrils. Close to, like this, close enough to smell the hot, beery fug of his breath, Paul could see how frayed and grubby his shirt was. His eyes were bloodshot, his speech slurred. The man was a wreck. Not just down on his luck, but terribly, terminally stricken.

  ‘You can’t just walk off like that.’

  He sounded reasonable, even friendly.

  They stared at each other. Paul said, ‘All right, spit it out. What do you want?’

  ‘I want my wife back.’

  ‘That’s up to her.’

  ‘Oh, I suppose you’ve nowt to do with it?’

  ‘She was already separated when I met her.’

  ‘I saw you.’

  ‘What do you mean, you saw me?’

  ‘Fucking my wife.’

  The gap in the bloody curtains. ‘You can’t blame me for the state of your marriage.’

  ‘I don’t. I blame her.’

  For a moment Halliday’s grin disappeared in a blaze of misery. Almost immediately, he was smirking again. Paul could have understood anger, but despite Halliday’s words what he saw in his face was not anger but a kind of jeering complicity. He seemed more like a pimp than an outraged husband.

  And, God, he was drunk. It hadn’t been so apparent at first, but now he was swaying on his feet. ‘You’re one of a long line. Don’t you go thinking there’s owt special about you. She’s had more men than I’ve had hot dinners.’

  ‘Aw, piss off. And if I catch you following me round again –

  ‘You’ll do what?’

  Suddenly Halliday’s fists were clenched. Paul walked on again and this time he knew he wan’t being followed. When he looked back Halliday hadn’t move. He stood, shabby, burly, bereft, in front of the bandstand where now, under the conductor’s raised baton, the band was tuning up again.

  He had to tell Teresa. Tell her what? That Halliday was following him around, that he was angry, that he wanted her back; but she already knew all that. All the same he had to go to see her. Halliday was pathetic, with his swearing and his grinning and his melodrama and his filthy shirt, but he was angry and persistent, and he’d seen them making love. That would goad almost any man into action.

  Why, with all her dressmaking skills, did she not run up a pair of curtains that met in the middle? It wouldn’t have taken her more than an hour. Or get bolts fitted on the doors? Or live in a first-floor flat? At the moment he felt guilty for ever having doubted her, but when he stepped back a little he saw that her behaviour was every bit as odd as Neville had said.

  He would put bolts on th
e doors. That was one practical thing he could do to help. And although his meeting with Halliday had left him more bewildered than ever, he didn’t feel he could end the affair now.

  In the distance he saw Elinor, with a bunch of pink candyfloss in her hand, standing a little to one side as Abbott and Ruthie talked. Waving, calling her name, he struggled through the crowd to join her.

  Ten

  That evening Teresa sat at a corner table in the Café Royal, staring all around her, noticing who was in tonight. She never seemed to get tired of the place, but Paul had begun to hate it. He felt all the time that, as Teresa’s latest lover, he was being assessed, and he had no independent status to make the verdict a matter of indifference to him. A young man with a flushed, familiar, subtly jeering face came up and spoke to her, but she ignored him, and he rapidly withdrew. She had immense self-confidence with men, though with women she often seemed wary. She’d have said this was because she liked men better, that she preferred their company, but really it was all based on contempt. On long, hard experience of men as sexual predators. In Teresa’s eyes, every man she met, from the waiter who served their drinks to the Archbishop of Canterbury, shuffled towards her with his trousers round his ankles and his dick pointing at the sky.

  Paul kept his back to the room, leaning forward, trying to get her full attention. He wanted to talk to her, and he knew she was resisting him.

  ‘Oh, look,’ she said ‘there’s Gus.’

  She raised a hand to wave, but Paul caught hold of her wrist. ‘No, don’t do that.’

  She sat back, sullenly. ‘You never want to meet anybody else. You only like being with me when we’re on our own.’

  ‘That’s not true. You could have come to the fair with us.’

  ‘The fair?’

  He could see she wanted to pick a quarrel. Well, she could have one, but not about their social life. ‘I saw Jack this afternoon.’ He thought she changed colour, though in this golden light it was hard to tell.

  ‘Oh? Did he see you?’

  ‘Yes, we bumped into each other at the fairground.’

  ‘By accident?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  She shrugged. ‘What happened?’

  ‘What do you mean, what happened?’

  ‘Did he try to start a fight?’

  ‘No.’ He was watching her curiously. ‘He seemed a bit pathetic, actually.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yes. Sort of a mangy-tiger feel about him.’ She winced and turned her head away. ‘For what it’s worth, I think he’s still very much in love with you.’

  ‘Then he’s got a bloody funny way of showing it.’

  Tears, almost. Not quite.

  ‘So you say. But he never actually does anything, does he?’

  She stood up. ‘I’m going to say hello to Gus. Come if you want.’

  That was his last chance to speak to her. She was swallowed up in the crowd around the great Augustus and soon he could see only her head and shoulders. He should have challenged her about the note, only he knew that if he did and she lied it would be the end of the affair. And he wasn’t ready for it to end.

  In the cab going back she hardly spoke. He went through the usual routine, going down the steps before her, looking in the coal-hole, unlocking the door, going in first.

  ‘I’ll buy some bolts,’ he said. ‘It won’t take me a minute to put them on.’

  He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. She’d infected him with her passivity.

  They undressed and got into bed. Their lovemaking had changed, become rougher, less nuanced, more abrupt. Every night, now, he seemed to be pushing at the boundaries of what was acceptable, waiting for a protest and then, when none came, moving still further away from tenderness. Was this what Halliday had done? After it was over he lay staring into the darkness, knowing he didn’t want to spend the night with her. She’d lied to him; worse than that, she’d lied about something that mattered for reasons he couldn’t understand.

  He rolled over and kissed her upper arm. ‘I think I’ll go back tonight, if you don’t mind. I want an early start.’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, all right.’

  She was too sleepy to be surprised. He gathered his clothes together as best he could and went into the bathroom to dress. Letting himself out of the flat, he climbed the basement steps and paused for a moment, his face lifted to the light of the street lamp, defying Halliday who might – might – be watching from the shadows but more probably was tucked up warm and drunk in bed. If he was going to do anything he’d have done it long since. Then Paul started to walk home. The gritty fumes from the railway line were mixed tonight with a fresher smell: the dawn smell and as he walked he felt the wind quicken, flattening his trousers against his legs as he reached the corner of the street. He didn’t look back.

  Paul had never been a heavy drinker, but now he drank every night. He knew it was pointless looking for Halliday, he had to wait for Halliday to find him, and he felt it would happen. It wasn’t over. On the last day of term he went with a crowd of students to the Crown. The evening was warm. All the doors and windows were open, the bar was crowded, drinkers spilling out on to the pavement. He drank four pints of tepid beer, very quickly, argued passionately on subjects he didn’t care about in the least, sang, swayed from side to side, vowed undying friendship to people he would never see again, became sentimental, demonstrative, then, abruptly, morose, and, deciding he wasn’t fit company for anybody in his present state, plunged out into the night. He staggered and held on to the wall, while above his head pale London stars swam in shoals from roof to roof.

  The city was brazen and clamorous. The crowded pavements exasperated him and so he turned into the side streets, letting his feet carry him forward, unthinking, until there was no sound except the echo of his footsteps and the stamping of horses at a cab stand. He turned left, blindly, and found himself in a livery yard. The darkness now was full of tossing manes, snuffles, snorts, slurrings and scrapings of iron-shod hooves on stone. The horses were too intent on their hay to bother about him, though he caught a glint of eye white as a head turned. Was there a way through? He couldn’t see, and didn’t fancy slithering all the way across the muddy yard to find out, so began to retrace his steps. He’d almost reached the lighted pavement when a shadow peeled itself off the wall.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, thinking it must be a groom or an off-duty cabbie. ‘Took the wrong turn.’

  ‘Too damn right you did.’ That voice. Genial, complicitous, dangerous, drunk. ‘Got you now, haven’t I?’

  The world shrank to a few yards of muddy ground. There was no time except for the long second in which he turned to face Halliday He opened his mouth to speak and a fist smashed into it, sending him staggering back against the wall. The next two blows he dodged and then began to dance around, looking for an opening. Nothing existed now except Halliday’s eyes and grinning mouth. Paul darted back, Halliday followed, swinging his fist wide, unable to stop. As he lunged past, Paul hit him on the mouth. The pain in his knuckles was pure joy. Halliday shook his head. Anybody else would have been on the ground. The punch seemed to sober him. He came for Paul, who backed away, feeling the wall hard against his spine. The next blow caught him on the side of the head and he went down. Huddled against the wall, he felt Halliday’s boot smash into his ribs. And again. The sounds jerking out of him seemed to come from the boot not his mouth. He tried to crawl away. Halliday followed. In desperation Paul lunged forward and grabbed Halliday round the knees. Halliday tried to kick himself free. When that failed, he pummelled Paul’s head and shoulders, but Paul hung on. Hands came down, clawing, finding the orbits of his eyes. He let go of Halliday’s knees and pulled at his wrists. Then a voice. Not Halliday’s. Somebody else. He seized his opportunity and crawled towards the light. Behind him the voices went on. Then legs coming towards him. He braced himself for another kicking, but, instead, a hand touched his shoulder. A face, not Halliday’s, bent over him. He tri
ed to speak, but his mouth wouldn’t stretch. Everything hurt. Up to this moment, there’d been hardly any pain, but now, as the other man helped him to his feet, every move was agony. ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Aye, you look it.’

  Paul was on his feet now, though only just. Halliday had gone.

  ‘Can you walk?’

  ‘I’ll be all right.’

  As long as Halliday didn’t come back. He looked around, tried to think. Get a cab. There was a stand not far way, he remembered that. He tried to walk, but after a few feet everything went black.

  ‘Come on. I’ll get you to a cab.’

  Every step sent a jolt of pain from his ankle to the top of his skull. Somewhere in all this he’d lost his hat. Dazed, he looked round and found it squashed flat into the mud. His suit was caked with mud and worse. Cab. Cab. He couldn’t think further than that. They set off, Paul’s arm across the groom’s shoulder. He wondered if his mouth was bleeding, and pressed his lips to find out, but his hand was so filthy the blood – if there was blood – didn’t show. At last, the cab stand. One cab waiting.

  The driver took one look at him. ‘Sorry mate. Can’t do it. What you been doing? Rolling in it?’

  Paul was too weak to argue, and the groom was going no further, he could see that. ‘Can’t leave the yard. More than me job’s worth,’ he said, though his breath stank of porter.

  Paul struggled to get money out of his pocket and pressed it into his outstretched hand. ‘Thanks.’