Sweet William

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘Oh,’ said Pamela, as soon as she entered the sitting room. ‘I see you’ve got a television set.’

  ‘It’s on loan,’ said Ann. She started to prepare the lunch, peeling the cooked beetroot and putting hot water and vinegar into a bowl. There wasn’t any sugar. She’d taken a list out shopping, but when she went into the supermarket she hadn’t been able to concentrate on what she was doing; she’d forgotten all sorts of things.

  Pamela told her she was thinking of applying for a job in London – it was time she broke new ground: her friend in Clapham thought she was a fool to bury herself at the seaside. She wanted to find something more suited to her talents … she fancied herself as an amateur psychologist … maybe she could get an opening in criminal records.

  Ann looked down at her hands, stained crimson from the beetroot; she began to feel ill again. She’d been perfectly normal when she woke in the morning; the peculiar emotions of the night before had abated; she had eaten breakfast and passed to and fro in front of the television, and it was simply an object. She had even put the phone call from her mind. But now, with Pamela prattling on about finding herself, she could see the television protruding from the window ledge, its aerial pointing at the ceiling. It seemed to fill the room, blotting out her books, the glass of dying carnations, the photograph of her mother and father in its silver frame. Behind the curved eyeball of the screen was William. She had only to turn the switch and he’d be sitting there in a collar and tie, talking about drama. She wanted him back. She wanted to know what he looked like. She had to mention him.

  ‘A man gave it to me,’ she said.

  ‘Gave you what?’ said Pamela. She was turning over a lettuce leaf as if to make sure Ann had washed it properly.

  ‘He’s a playwright … he was on a programme last night.’

  ‘On the television?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She was watching Ann’s face intently; she was very astute. ‘What sort of a man?’

  ‘I’ve told you. A writer. He was waiting for me when I went into the church hall. He took me for coffee and we talked about his work and then—’

  ‘Church hall! You were picked up in a church hall?’

  Ann reddened. ‘Not picked up. He knew me.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Pamela impaled a slice of cold ham on the prong of her fork. She looked at it distastefully and rolled it into a heap under the lettuce leaf. She was like that; no matter what Ann did for her she never seemed to appreciate it.

  ‘I thought,’ said Pamela, ‘you were engaged to an American.’

  Ann had forgotten about Gerald. Not once throughout a disturbed night had there been images of him.

  ‘Gerald isn’t American,’ she said.

  Pamela knew perfectly well he was English, because Mrs Walton, at the first opportunity, had told Auntie Bea everything about him. In the telling, Gerald had been promoted from lecturer to professor, but her mother hadn’t altered his nationality.

  ‘Where does this man live?’ asked Pamela. ‘This playwright.’ As if she didn’t believe he existed.

  Ann said she didn’t know.

  ‘And he gave you a television set? Do you know how much they cost?’

  She had a way of looking at Ann, assessing the price of the clothes she wore – she had always done so, even as a child – the kind of shoes she bought. Her scrutiny, Ann felt, like Mrs Walton’s, was tinged with hostility. She thought Ann too tall, too ungainly – that her hair needed shaping. She herself was five foot one. She went to a dressmaker in Lewes and had her clothes copied from up-to-the-minute magazines. She was wearing a dress like a gym-slip, and she had black knee-socks over her stockings. It was disconcerting for both of them, being related by blood. It was all right when Ann was with people at work, with Mrs Kershaw, Olive. She could be herself, her away-from-home self. She could talk about sleeping with men and being left-wing. But with Pamela she was constrained. They had both been brought up within the same area of experience. Both had fled from their environment. They each listened with sharpened hearing to the note of affectation in the other’s voice. Ann could go home to Brighton for the weekend and look at the women with their out-of-date dresses and beehive hair styles, and feel superior. She could listen to the sound of lawn mowers on a Sunday morning, seated on a deckchair in the garden; to the buzz of wasps, the clatter of car bonnets, a radio somewhere over the trellis fence. She was there, but she was only visiting. She could bear it for the moment – the torment of being related to her mother and father, the wounding. She was waiting to go back to London, where she had no enemies – waiting for the retreat to be sounded. And it was the same for Pamela, even though she had not yet left home; it wasn’t anything to do with geography. So it was no use putting on a show. They could never be friends.

  ‘I didn’t say he’d given it to me,’ Ann protested. ‘It’s loaned.’

  ‘It’s a very odd thing to do.’ Pamela was stabbing at the mess on her plate. ‘He must have got a funny impression of you. What was he doing in a church hall?’

  ‘It was a school service. Mrs Kershaw was at work and I went in her place. Somebody had to go. Her Roddy always stays in bed.’

  ‘But what about him? That man. What was he there for?’

  ‘He was there for his children, of course.’

  The moment Ann said it, she realised he must be married. It hadn’t occurred to her before. She’d forgotten about the flesh of his flesh and all that went with it. She looked down at her plate, and the pattern of flowers was blurred. She was crying.

  ‘Oh crumbs,’ said Pamela, and she jumped up and pulled Ann’s head to her gym-slip and stroked her hair. She was terribly kind and gentle. She stood crooning to her, ‘Don’t cry … there … there.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Pamela,’ Ann said. ‘Ever since yesterday I’ve felt so ill. I must be due for the curse. Or I’ve got the flu.’ And she sniffed to prove it.

  Pamela wiped her face with the tea-towel and made her a cup of coffee. There was no sugar, so neither of them could drink it.

  Ann told her about William watching the door when she went into the school. She described his curls, the pinkness of his cheeks, the paleness of his eyes.

  ‘Oh,’ said Pamela, ‘he sounds sweet.’ And she gave a wistful smile as if they were talking about a baby.

  ‘He’s got spaces between his teeth … you know … gaps.’

  ‘Spaces?’ said Pamela. ‘Do you mean he’s got teeth missing?’

  They both began to laugh then. Ann cried at the same time.

  ‘I don’t really like men with curly hair,’ she confessed. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Only if they’ve got all their teeth,’ said Pamela. And they lolled on their chairs at the kitchen table and snorted with laughter.

  Ann felt weakened and relaxed; her voice became deeper and full of meaning. She told Pamela about William dancing round her at the top of the hill, the cars going downwards, the plane trees growing smaller in perspective as they reached the Finchley Road. ‘Almost bare of leaves,’ she said, ‘and when the cars drove by, people looked at us, and he began to circle round and round me … you know … tripping … like a prize-fighter. Like somebody on the cinema.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Pamela said.

  ‘Just before I went down the hill, he kissed me. On the side of my mouth.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Then he rang me up and said he was glad I’d watched him.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Pamela said again, but Ann was talking about Gerald now, re-living the farewell party and pushing him out of the flat.

  ‘He wanted me to take all my clothes off, but how could I? The smell of his breath too … it was awful.’

  ‘There’s something I ought to tell you,’ said Pamela. ‘I’ve come down for a reason.’

  ‘I didn’t like the way he was so rough with me. I mean, we’ve been to bed several times, but I don’t know how I feel. He should have taken me with him to America.’

  ‘I
’m late with my period,’ said Pamela. ‘Two months.’

  But Ann didn’t hear her. She was thinking of Mrs Walton shouting from the bedroom.

  ‘How would you feel,’ she asked, ‘if your mother started calling out?’

  Pamela was drumming the tips of her fingers on the table and staring out of the window. She seemed to have lost interest.

  ‘She came down to meet Gerald,’ continued Ann. ‘She kept calling out for water. When we went to the airport the next day, there wasn’t time to say goodbye properly. I just tried to make him feel guilty. In the future I’ll only have letters to go on. They’re so impersonal. I’m supposed to fly out to him in February, but how can I? I don’t really know him.’

  She didn’t like Pamela knowing her engagement wasn’t all moonlight and roses, but she had to tell someone. Pamela was looking at her now with contempt.

  ‘The old bastard,’ she said.

  ‘He’s not old,’ said Ann. ‘He’s only twenty-six.’

  ‘Your mother,’ Pamela said. ‘Fancy landing on you the week he was leaving.’

  Ann was shocked that Pamela could be so brutal. She regretted instantly that she’d told her so much. Pamela had obviously missed the point and maybe she would repeat the entire conversation to her mother, who would then telephone Mrs Walton.

  ‘You won’t tell Auntie Bea anything, will you?’ she begged. She hadn’t meant to whine but she dreaded lest her mother hear about the television set.

  Pamela didn’t reply. She sat there scraping her thumb nail on the tablecloth.

  ‘Please,’ Ann pleaded. All at once her mouth started to tremble – she bit her lip and her cheeks wobbled – she was actually crying again.

  This time Pamela wasn’t sympathetic. She said coldly, ‘You know what’s wrong with you, don’t you? It’s nothing to do with the flu or getting a period.’ She thumped her fist on the table as if it was obvious, and the cold coffee leapt in the cups.

  Ann stared at her with moist eyes. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ve fallen in love with that toothless wonder you met at the church hall,’ said Pamela. ‘That’s what’s the matter with you.’ And she glared at Ann with her eyebrows set in one straight line.

  She didn’t help Ann to wash up; she went and sat in the sitting room and watched the television. First there was a story for the under-fives, then a programme in Welsh.

  When Mrs Kershaw’s children came home from school, Pamela said she would come to the swimming baths. Usually she spent ages in the bathroom before dashing off to Clapham. She thought the children were very original; she admired their cast-off clothing and gave each of them a two shilling piece. The little girl was all over her. Ann had noticed before that Emily had a tendency to play-act; Mrs Kershaw’s Roddy was supposed to be an actor, and he often took the children to the theatre. Emily stroked Pamela’s coat and fiddled with her necklace. She said she was pretty. She borrowed a bathing costume of her mother’s for Pamela and they went into the changing room together. Ann sat upstairs in the onlookers’ gallery.

  The swimming coach was covered in a rash; he was so busy scratching he’d never have noticed anyone going down for the third time. He padded up and down with his feet turned out and his chest inflamed. It was probably something to do with the chlorine, Ann thought: everyone spent a penny in the water and they overdid the chemical to kill the germs. There was a pregnant lady teaching her two-year-old to be afraid of nothing. She had long red hair that turned black in the water and trailed out behind her like seaweed; the child kept screaming and scrabbling upwards in her arms to be out of the wet. Ann wondered if they put dye in the pool, until she saw it was a reflection of the tiled floor: it was blue like the sky in a picture postcard. The roof was set with great panes of glass – everything shimmered with light: the tiled walls, the surface of the pool, the white arches leading to the changing cubicles.

  Pamela looked nice in Mrs Kershaw’s costume. She had a very pale skin and heavy sloping shoulders and she’d left on her necklace, the one from Turkey, hung with little silver coins. She sat down on the edge of the bath, Emily and Jasper dragging at her elbows, and searched for Ann in the gallery. She waved. She nudged the children and pointed, but they didn’t look in the right direction. While they were squinting upwards, a boy ran out of a cubicle and jumped clean over them, with knees raised, and landed in the pool. The water bounced straight up into the air and curved over. Pamela shifted on her haunches and wiped her face with her hands. She stretched one foot out and flopped clumsily downwards. The children dog-paddled in a circle. After a few moments Pamela struck out towards the deep end, head turning from side to side, as if she couldn’t get comfortable, shoulders rolling, her pale arms lifting. When she reached the rail she heaved herself on to the tiles and lay on her belly, stranded, water streaming away from her white legs. She sat upright and blew her nose in her fingers.

  It was then Ann saw William. He was standing with his hands on his hips, looking up at her. He wore a pair of black swimming trunks and his hair was flat to his head. For one moment Ann stopped breathing and the next she wanted to hide. She thought everyone else was free and undressed, while she was cumbersome and conspicuous in her grey coat and her court shoes. She was even holding a bag; it was dangling over the rail, bulky with her documents and Emily’s head-band. She almost let go of it. She had never really liked nudity – all that expanse of flesh touched by the grave – unless you’d been away on holiday and become less obscene. But he looked beautiful, outlined in light that seemed to waver and coalesce, though she knew it was only the reflection of the glass roof on the water. There was so much noise and movement: the screaming, the splashing, the mouths opening in one great shout, the putty-coloured bodies plunging from the diving board. A wave of sound and light rose up and engulfed her. She felt she was drowning.

  He took them to have tea in a café on the Finchley Road. Ann didn’t remember how they got there; it was quite a long walk and there was a lot of traffic. The children chattered and Pamela carried the wet towels. When they sat down at the table he just stared at Ann. She didn’t mind him staring, as she would have done had it been Gerald or some stranger. She was so happy she couldn’t stop smiling. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair was drying and beginning to curl again. Pamela had found a piece of wool in her pocket and she played cat’s cradle with the children.

  ‘Pamela’s come to stay,’ Ann told him.

  ‘Aye, I know,’ he said. He knew she wanted him to include Pamela just for a moment. ‘I hope you have a pleasant stay.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Pamela in a subdued voice. Ann wondered where all her social ease had gone. Her face was blotchy and her fashionable clothes looked rather silly. Her gloves, lying on the table, had a row of holes across the knuckles.

  After Ann had drunk her tea he reached forward and dropped something into her cup.

  ‘For you,’ he said. ‘From my pinkie.’

  She didn’t know what he meant. There was a silver ring, perfectly plain, at the bottom of the cup.

  ‘Whatever is it?’ she asked, and she lifted it up, sticky at the edge with sugar.

  He took it from her and held up her left hand and slid the ring down her finger.

  Pamela was crouched over the web of wool with her hair crumpled on her collar. She was looking at Ann with her mouth open, and her eyes were bloodshot too, stained with pink, and watering. And for the first time in all their lives she was watching Ann timidly.

  ‘Isn’t that beautiful,’ Ann said, twisting her hand about to show the silver ring. Under the table he was stroking her knee and smiling – smiling, just as she was.

  She didn’t remember leaving the café. She knew he hailed a taxi and they sat on the two tip-down seats. Pamela was there, wedged opposite with her hands still trapped in the cat’s cradle of wool, and the children, one on either side of her, limp on the leather seating, with towels in their arms and pale knees bunched together. It was dark in the sky and
there were pockets of light in the busy streets. Shadows ran across William’s face. The taxi stopped and jolted and crawled forward amidst the line of cars going out of the city to Golders Green. Shut outside in the October night the people swarmed over the crossings and ran dementedly for buses; they leapt towards the moving platforms and swung like rag dolls from the glittering rails. It felt like Christmas – the lighted windows, the extravagant journey, the silver ring encircling her finger. William didn’t come into the house; she didn’t invite him because she knew if he wanted to he would have said.

  ‘I’ll see you very soon,’ he told her.

  The children ran over the gravel. Beyond the privet hedge she could hear the taxi with him inside change gear as it climbed the hill.

  ‘Hang your coat up,’ she said to Pamela, when they were in the flat. Pamela had flung it on to the sofa with the wet towels and her gloves.

  There wasn’t an atom of tenderness in Ann at this first moment of love. Now that he had gone she wasn’t happy or grateful or bewildered. If anything, she felt anger. Until now it was as if she had been wrapped in strips of cloth like an Egyptian mummy. Every year, time had unwound another layer. At the very end of her life she would have lain exposed in the air and fallen away to dust. But William had cut through the bandages with one stroke, and she’d tumbled out perfectly preserved and ready to live. And he should have been with her. She didn’t care if he was married or wore scruffy clothes. Pamela was right; she loved him.