Unfortunately, though, I was being a spot too entertaining. I missed what was written on the board by the gates. I hadn’t wanted to miss anything.
We went inside. It was by no means as luxurious as the London office would have been.
There was a long bare corridor and people in white overalls. You’d have supposed that even in the provinces there would be some attempt at fashion. As for myself, I think I’d have felt quite out of place in all my finery if I hadn’t remembered that this was just my ordinary humble workaday wear—not donned specifically to impress.
My two friends now left me in charge of another woman, a woman who had thick, unfortunate ankles. I was taken into a reception room with unpleasant brown lino. Somebody brought me a cup of tea. It was strong and sweet (I don’t take sugar), served in a thick white cup with a generally grubby appearance. I took no more than just a sip—having carefully wiped the tiny portion I was brave enough to set against my lips—though, in the process, bequeathing it a vividly scarlet smear: perhaps more of a dynamic symbol, however, than merely an irritating waste of Max Factor. Yes! I felt like Virginia Mayo! I was painting the clouds with sunshine!
But anyway.
“Please,” I said, “I think I should now like to be driven home.”
I stood up and adjusted my hat and gloves; even in retreat a lady had to look her best. Exits were every bit as important as entrances.
Naturally it was to my new companion that I had turned; there was no one else in the room. She sat stolidly beside the closed door.
Then I picked up my parasol and reticule—I always refer to one particular handbag as my reticule, although it’s made of leather and is really quite capacious. I smiled as brightly as I could... and just as if I hadn’t been affected by the depressing chill of institutional walls (for that is what in all honesty they now felt like: institutional!) or as if I hadn’t been made sick, almost literally so, by that cup of tea-infused molasses. I told her that it wasn’t her fault; no, not at all; but that—how could I put this?—the ambience wasn’t right: not exactly one the Queen or Mrs. Thatcher might feel thoroughly at home in. I pointed out that for anyone to benefit from our discussions we should have to be sitting in far softer and more conducive surroundings; and I mentioned that my instincts about such things were simply never wrong.
But attitudes seemed to have changed a little.
Perhaps, I thought, it hadn’t been tactful of me to display my own neat ankles. I could so easily have kept them covered by my dress.
“Yes, I’d like to go now,” I reiterated.
“Only a little more patience, dear. Doctor will be here at any moment. While we wait, why not just finish the rest of your nice tea?”
“Doctor?” I asked.
She nodded.
“You mean, about the baby?”
“I mean about anything you’d like to discuss with him.”
“That’s very thoughtful—very thoughtful indeed; an attention which I really hadn’t expected; I can see that Feminist looks after its employees. Yet between ourselves I should so much rather talk to my own physician. I was planning to, anyhow, within the next few days; but I didn’t want to rush off and bother everyone the instant I found out. I refuse to be a fusspot.”
“Doctor will be here at any moment,” she said. She was probably well-intentioned but it was as though she hadn’t listened to a word. My goodness, maybe I ought to apply for the position of Personnel Chief: how I should insist on proper training, on stamping out ineptitude! But that was for the future. In the meantime I began to grow impatient.
I said: “I know I shall be writing a series of articles on motherhood and marriage and what to do if one breast hangs lower than the other, which I appreciate is quite a problem for the vast majority of women. But I’m afraid I don’t altogether see why I should need a checkup on account of it. My own tits are enviably symmetrical.”
I avoided glancing at hers.
“Besides, they should have given me some warning. They probably have no idea how difficult it is to perform your ablutions in a wedding dress!”
What’s more, I had no intention of letting them find out. But I didn’t tell her that.
“May I get past you, please?”
“Sorry, dear. You’ve got to stay here until the doctor comes. Then they’ll take you up to bed.”
“ Bed?”
And suddenly I understood.
“I’ve come to the wrong place, haven’t I? This isn’t a publishing office!”
“No, dear.”
“You make it sound like a hospital. Now, why in the name of holy shit have I been brought to a hospital?”
“Well, it’s far better that—”
I hit her with my reticule. I swung it with every ounce of energy I had; and caught her squarely on the chin.
My tome on King David was probably what did it. I’d been saving it up, yet luckily, only the day before, I had decided to make a start on it—normally the only book I carried was Pride and Prejudice. But it seemed right for King David rather than Mr. Darcy to keep himself in trim by flooring latter-day Goliaths. (And had he been looking at her ankles he would scarcely have noticed the difference.) She only swayed for a second or two; but this appeared to be enough. In no time I was out through that door and running down the corridor.
And God was listening. There was nobody in sight.
As I ran, the truth occurred to me. There had simply been a most appalling error. A case of mistaken identity. Totally horrific.
This was a lunatic asylum.
It flashed upon me in all its dreadful clarity. Some poor soul had been certified; and her physical description couldn’t have been a lot dissimilar to mine.
Which meant she must be fairly young. Oh, sweet child, I felt so sorry. How unimaginably terrible to know that, somewhere out there, there could be people—your own family perhaps; your own good friends (as you had thought!)—people ready to put their names to any deed so unspeakably shameful and wicked and self-serving. So utterly lacking in compassion or empathy. How you must feel! Oh, dear Lord. Yes, how you must feel!
But I would discover who she was and I would visit her regularly. I would strive to restore her confidence, her self-respect, her capacity for trust.
I knew that if at present she was feeling frightened she’d think she would always be feeling frightened. I should try—oh, how I’d try—to soothe away those fears.
Had I said that it was unimaginable? I now found out it wasn’t, not in the slightest. I found I could imagine it only too easily.
Yet in the meantime I still had my own predicament to consider—no one could deny that, for the moment, I had got myself into a bit of a pickle. (No, not I; circumstance!)
Fortunately it wasn’t any more than just a bit of a pickle, but even that could be degrading—not instantly lending itself to interpretation as a merry jape. “ Oh, guess what happened to me this morning? I do hope you’re not going to believe it! I was carried off to the loony bin! ”
No, of course I could pass it off as a joke. Almost anything could be appropriated to make an entertaining story.
Besides , this one was really very funny.
But, even so, that didn’t stop me running. I don’t know why I ran. I ran instinctively.
Out through the entrance hall, out through the open gates, out onto the main road.
There was a bus approaching and there were people standing at a reasonably nearby stop. It must have helped that I had King David as an intermediary. A man after God’s own heart!
I heard impassioned shouts. With both hands lifting my dress, despite the parasol I held in one and the reticule I still clutched in the other, I ran after that bus in my flying pink satin slippers—and thanked heaven it was all downhill! “Hold on, little one.” I had no option but to pray that telepathy would work. “Mama doesn’t mean to harm you. It’s a bumpy ride but it’ll very soon be over.”
I could imagine him standing there, red-faced, thumping his
little fists against the walls of my stomach, desperate only to get out and climb into my arms for loving reassurance.
Naturally the three or four who had been standing at the stop were the first to board the bus. I awaited my turn in anxious suspense, not daring to ascertain the progress of my pursuers. The conductor helped me on: a coloured man and such a gentleman.
But most of the passengers at once moved further down inside, as though even in so short a time something of those bare stone-floored corridors had managed to rub off on me.
Three schoolboys from the upper deck came jostling and gawping on the bottom stairs.
And the bus would not set off.
“Please ring the bell,” I said to the conductor. “There’s no one left to come.”
But still I was so breathless that I wondered if he’d understood.
Apparently he had. “We’re a few minutes early, madam.” He glanced uncertainly towards the front and then I saw that the driver was getting down from his cab.
Oh, God, I thought. Dear God. Please help.
I watched the driver and conductor conversing on the pavement. I saw the passengers—both those who’d backed away and those who had stayed put—looking curious or impatient or embarrassed. A few were sniggering. I saw men in white coats running down the hill. One of them carried something which I thought might be a straitjacket.
But a straitjacket would harm my baby; no way I’d let them use it. I’d explain the awfulness of the mistake—although at present I couldn’t set great store by the intellect of anyone who came from that place.
I thought again, Oh, God, please help. If I go down on my knees, unashamedly bearing witness in front of all these people—will you help me then?
So that is what I did. Although there must have been the germs and the dirt off a thousand pairs of shoes, shoes that might have stepped in any kind of nastiness, and there were also torn-off strips of ticket and a couple of screwed-up tissues and even a scattering of squashed raisins, that is what I did. I went down on my knees in my rose-embroidered silk.
And I said: “It isn’t me I’m asking you to care about. It’s my baby, my son, my small Horatio. Your son, as much as mine. And it’s my duty to protect him. Somehow I’ve just got to get him home!”
I attempted, on the backs of my once-white gloves, to wipe away my tears.
“You see, that’s where I know that we’ll be safe. That’s where I know that we’ll be happy. There are people there—good people—who will always do their best to look after us. At home.”
I tried to curry favour. I reminded God of how, even from childhood, I had hoped one day to find my place in heaven.
But then I corrected this.
“I mean, our places. I no longer care what happens just to me.”
Yet now those men in the white coats had boarded the bus and the passengers were again starting to inch forward.
The men were pulling me up off my knees.
But they did it quite gently; and their gentleness released a miracle.
Furthermore, something else did. For one of them held out to me my picture hat—which, during my crazy downhill flight, I hadn’t even realized I had lost. Not a straitjacket at all... my lovely white picture hat! I now saw why some of the passengers had been laughing. Clearly, my hair must have looked such a mess! Apart from its not having been brushed recently, let alone washed, I knew that it required its long-overdue dose of Love that Blonde! All its dark roots had to be practically waving for attention.
So with trembling hands I shoved the hat back on and tried to tie the ribbon underneath my chin. But I couldn’t do it—oh, how I’d got the shakes! When he saw this, another of the men did it for me... although really the sides of the bus were far too constricting to accommodate such a gorgeously broad-brimmed hat. And how everybody laughed—myself included! Indeed, the nature of everybody’s laughter had now altogether changed; even the schoolboys’. All those dear hearts, they were laughing with me, not against.
Therefore there had been a splendid reason for the whole terrifying episode. Hadn’t there? Everyone had learned his lesson. The world had become a nicer place.
I truly shouldn’t have forgotten, yet again, that this was how it all worked: that this was a new beginning—the kind of new beginning to end every other new beginning I had ever known.
I was crying once more but now my tears were tears of joy. A joy so intense I felt my heart must break—could any mortal bear to be so happy? I brushed from my knees a few of the squashed raisins and I smiled at the men who stood about me: the hat-retriever and the ribbon-fixer in particular, although they had all, all of them, been so exemplary. “I have always,” I said, “depended upon the kindness of strangers.” Didn’t that seem the best, the very aptest way to put it?
And then, just a second or two before my legs finally gave out and I sagged between the strong protective arms that held me, I looked around at my fellow passengers and at the driver and conductor, both as black as your hat, and I flashed them all a rapturous and heartfelt beam.
All movement stilled and they appeared to freeze into a tableau: a tableau brilliantly coloured yet at the same time restful. I saw this busload of passengers now standing in a garden. (Perhaps the bus had broken down.) It was not unlike the recreation garden of my childhood only far more beautiful. And the passengers were far more beautiful—patently I didn’t know them but I would have vouched for great individual transformation—and there came unutterably lovely music from a new and ornamental bandstand. I bestowed on everyone my blessing. Or at least I had intended to. I had wanted to let them know that everything was fine—fabulous—fantastic!
I had meant to say:
“Oh, fiddle-dee-fuck, my dears! Just fiddle-dee-fuck!”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material but in some cases this has not been possible.
“If Love Were All” from Bitter Sweet. Words and music by Noël Coward © 1929 Chappell & Co. Ltd.
“I’ll See You Again” from Bitter Sweet. Words and music by Noël Coward © 1929 Chappell & Co. Ltd.
“The Boyfriend” from The Boyfriend. Words and music by Sandy Wilson © 1954 Chappell & Co. Ltd.
“It’s Only a Paper Moon” from Take a Chance. Music by Harold Arlen. Words by Billy Rose and E.Y. Harburg © 1933 Harms Inc. (Warner Bros.) British publisher, Chappell Music Ltd.
“Ten Cents a Dance” from Simple Simon. Music by Richard Rodgers. Words by Lorenz Hart © 1933 Harms Inc. (Warner Bros.) British publisher, Chappell Music Ltd.
“September Song” from Knickerbocker Holiday. Music by Kurt Weill. Words by Maxwell Anderson © 1938 de Sylva, Brown & Henderson Inc. British publisher, Chappell Music Ltd.
“I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now” © 1909 Chas. K. Harris Music Publishing Co. (USA). Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd., 138–140 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0LD.
“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” by Frank Loesser from Neptune’s Daughter © 1948 Frank Music Corporation. © Renewed 1976 Frank Music Corporation. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“Dancing in the Dark” from The Band Wagon. Music by Arthur Schwartz. Words by Howard Dietz © 1931 Harms Inc. (Warner Bros.) British publisher, Chappell Music Ltd.
“Belle of the Ball.” Music by Leroy Anderson. Words by Mitchell Parish © 1951/53, Mills Music Inc., New York. Reproduced by kind permission of Belwin-Mills Music Ltd., 250 Purley Way, Croydon, Surrey, England.
A Streetcar Named Desire © 1947 by Tennessee Williams. Theatre of Tennessee Williams Volume 1. Reprinted by kind permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Love Scene: Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Published in Great Britain by Angus & Robertson, 1978. My grateful acknowledgements to Jesse Lasky and Pat Silver, who wrote this entertaining book.
THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK
published by The New York Review of Books
435
Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
www.nyrb.com
Copyright © 1982 by Stephen Benatar
Introduction copyright © 2007 by John Carey
All rights reserved.
Cover photograph: John Rawlings, In the Daguerreotype Manner, 1941; © Condé Nast Archives/Corbis
Cover design: Katy Homans
Frontispiece: Donato Barcaglia of Milan, Street Orderly Boy, Paddington Street Gardens, Marlyebone, London; photograph by John Murphy
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Benatar, Stephen.
Wish her safe at home / by Stephen Benatar ; introduction by John Carey.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York : St. Martin’s/Marek, 1982.
1. Single women—Fiction. 2. Mental illness—Fiction. 3. Bristol (England)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6052.E449W5 2010
823'.914—dc22
2009036316
eISBN 978-1-59017-372-5
v1.0
For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series
visit www.nyrb.com
or write to:
Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
Table of Contents
Cover
Biographical Notes
Frontispiece
Title Page
Contents
Introduction
Dedication
Wish Her Safe at Home
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Wish Her Safe At Home Page 25
