‘Well, he’s only just started, like,’ admitted the proud mother-in-law. ‘But it’s early days.’
William said he had been let down by a car-hire firm. They were newly-weds and they had a room booked at the Crewe Arms Hotel. The man grunted; the wife shifted on her seat and sighed.
The hotel was three miles away, opposite the station. It stood like a prison, built of brick and stone, blackened by the coal dust from the steam trains.
‘Thanks awfully,’ said Ann, deposited on the pavement with suitcase and bridegroom.
They walked down a flight of steps railed in wrought iron, waved to the couple in the car, went into the swing doors, spun round and out onto a purple carpet whorled with flowers.
William said he couldn’t bear her to come to Liverpool. He had gone to Crewe to prevent her. He couldn’t find her when the train stopped.
‘I was in the loo,’ she said.
He didn’t want her to see the play. It was absurd, trivial; she was the only thing that counted. A flower, a Michaelmas daisy. He wanted them to be here, in the middle of nowhere, together, to recapture their love, which was beyond price – or first nights of plays, or futile men and women calling each other darling. ‘You’re my darling,’ he said. ‘My ain folk.’ And his eyes filled with tears, and she comforted him, saying over and over he was her sweetheart, her dulcimer boy.
She preened herself in the dining room, sure of him, eating her sardine salad, her loin of pork. The carpeting was so thick, they talked in whispers.
‘They want the play in America.’
‘Oh good. That is good.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You’re what matters.’
‘I love you—’
‘They may not want it in the end—’
‘Oh, they will, they will.’
‘It’s early days.’
‘When you go to America,’ she said.
‘When we go to America,’ he corrected.
‘We’ll have to take the baby.’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to take the bairn.’
He put down his knife and fork. He stretched out his hands across the table and cradled her face. It was unbearable how much they loved each other.
There was an elderly cashier seated at a desk by the door. She had a little gold pencil hanging by a chain from her spectacles. William thanked her for the meal. She simpered and jerked her head. The little pencil swung back and forth beneath her withered ear.
It was like the beginning, before it got spoilt. He didn’t hold her like a wheelbarrow at the side of the bed, arch her back, shout the crude words. He was tender, gentle, life-enhancing. He tried to explain how he had felt the last few dreadful weeks. The strain of his play … events growing beyond his control. At home the consistent critic, the patient misunderstander … arranging life a little better than he liked it … preferring not quite the same things as himself … turning the past over and over. Endeavouring not to poke the eyes of the cat with a pencil, but to stroke its ears. She didn’t understand any of it. It sounded as if he was criticising her, or was he talking about Edna? She daren’t dwell on the bit about the cat.
He said of all the people in the world she was dearest to his heart – his little baby-maker, the one who believed him, whose capacity for deception was as great as his own.
She only partially understood him. She had to struggle to clear his words from the layers beneath. She thought there shouldn’t be any other people to choose from – there weren’t for her: he’d blotted out the sun. And he’d had babies before, by Sheila. She choked back the questions, the demands. ‘Oh I do love you,’ she repeated, over and over.
In the morning she enjoyed her eggs-and-bacon, the slices of thin toast, the sticky lump of marmalade in the dish. She closed her eyes to the H.P. sauce he poured onto his plate.
‘Isn’t this nice,’ she said.
‘Aye,’ he agreed. She must go home on the morning train – no, she must. He would follow on the midnight. He’d be home tomorrow morning in time for breakfast. He had to be off again to Glasgow in a few days – he frowned at her dejected face. Not for long: then never, never, never would they be separated again.
‘I’ll make you sick of me,’ he boasted. ‘You’ll see.’
‘I won’t be sick,’ she said.
‘Jesus,’ he said wonderingly, ‘We’ve almost cracked it, haven’t we?’
‘Ssshh,’ she admonished. ‘People are looking.’
But he was right, she thought. They had cracked it.
He put her on the train to London. He kissed her in the carriage doorway. He said the most beautiful things. I want … I need … I love …
Out went the train, a reversal of yesterday – the same sidings, the same trees, sheep, muddy cows. Backwards, away from him, unphotographed, unrecorded, jumbled in the memory.
When she arrived at the flat, she was worn out. She slept late into the evening. Then she bathed, washed her hair, tried to make the room look like home, for William. She hadn’t any nails to hammer into the walls, so she perched his pictures on the shelf above the cooker. She parked the pram by the doors leading onto the patio and searched in her suitcase for the half-finished garment he had made for the baby. She laid it on the waterproof cover of the pram. If only she had furnished the room for him. She flushed her mother’s letter down the lavatory.
When the doorbell rang at midnight, she was eating a cheese sandwich. She ran to the door thinking it was William come on an earlier train. It was Edna. There wasn’t time to hide the pram. It stood there like an expensive toy. Edna didn’t look sad or agitated. She was smiling as if it were a social call.
She said, ‘I felt compelled to come.’
She had a lot of thin scarves, made out of gauze, tied about her throat. When she took off her coat of beaver lamb, she was wearing a satin garment without sleeves; it could have been a nightdress, or a thin frock meant for dancing.
‘Is everything all right?’ asked Ann, putting the sandwich down on the draining board, and taking the coat into the bedroom.
‘No,’ said Edna. ‘He promised he wouldn’t move. Why is his desk here?’
‘We live here,’ Ann said.
There was nothing for Edna to sit on. She walked about the room, the gauze scarves floating above her bare shoulders. There was a straggle of hair, like wire, frizzed at the pit of her arm. ‘Why did you come here in the first place?’ she asked.
Ann told her about the roof and her landlady wanting the ceiling taken down. ‘So William found another flat,’ she said. ‘With a garden.’
Edna said, ‘William told me he had a fight with someone called Roddy. Mrs Kershaw asked him to leave. You were embarrassed. He said it was only fair to find you a new place before he came home.’
‘But he’s not going home,’ said Ann. ‘He can’t.’
‘It was never a permanent relationship,’ said Edna. ‘You knew that.’
‘It’s jolly well got to be,’ Ann said. ‘I’m having a baby.’
‘You’re young,’ Edna observed. ‘Do you like the pram? I bought it at John Barnes.’
After some seconds Ann began to cry. When she was able, she said, ‘I don’t understand any of you, I’ve just been to Liverpool to see William. We were so happy.’
‘To Liverpool?’ said Edna. ‘William said you wouldn’t go. He said it was over.’
‘Well, it isn’t,’ said Ann. ‘I did go.’
It was Edna’s turn to be distressed. The thought of Ann in Liverpool with William was obviously unbearable to her. ‘But Pamela’s there,’ she said. ‘She went three days ago. After that, he said he was coming home to me. I only permitted it on those grounds.’
I don’t believe any of it, thought Ann. But she did.
They both began to pace the room – Ann, lost and fearful, dragging her feet. Edna skimming across the bare linoleum in her ballet slippers. They passed each other several times with despairing eyes and faces wet with tears.
‘Does
he go to bed with you?’ asked Ann, finally.
‘I’m his wife,’ said Edna.
Ann sat down on the floor with her back to the wall. She covered her face with her hands. ‘Why does he do it?’ she said. ‘I was perfectly happy. I was going to marry Gerald.’
Edna didn’t reply. She was squatting beside the pram, muscular thighs bulging beneath the satin nightdress, checking the brakes, the quality of the canvas hood. The tears ran down her cheeks.
‘But why?’ repeated Ann. ‘Why did he have to send for Pamela?’
‘He doesn’t believe in free fall,’ Edna said. ‘He won’t let go of the branch until he’s quite sure of the next one.’ She wiped her eyes with her fist.
‘He must be ill,’ moaned Ann. ‘All the things he said. All those words. When I got your letter, he said not to take any notice. I felt awful. I really did. That bit about you feeling you were in prison—’
‘Yes,’ said Edna. ‘William thought that might get through to you.’ She rubbed her bare arms, teetered on her heels. She said severely, ‘I never wanted to write it. It seemed to me like blackmail. It’s not my style at all. But William dictated it … he said it was for the best.’
They stared at each other – Ann against the wall, skinny and hunched, Edna fleshy in the peach-coloured nightdress. They were like rodents on the floor of a cage, dwarfed under the ceiling.
Edna talked about William.
Ann didn’t want to listen, but what else could she do? If she allowed her mind to wander, she was faced with snapshots, one after the other: a field outside Crewe, Pamela on the divan with the silver coins round her neck, Mrs Kershaw motionless in the pink bedroom, Edna lying down in wifely fashion, ballet slippers flung at the foot of a chair.
Edna said William had a high IQ. His father drank: sometimes they took his trumpet from him by force and covered him with a coat in a doorway. Sheila had torn up William’s scripts, burned his first new suit in the back yard. He had left for London with Gus, had paid for him to go to night school. William and Edna had spent some time in a cottage near Merthyr Tydfil with the children. Sheila had gone off to Spain with a waiter she’d met in Shepherds Bush. William cut logs, dragged pails of water from the river. He found a swallow with a broken wing, nursed it, caught insects for it from the air, killed it with overfeeding. Sheila often came to visit Edna. She had arrived some weeks ago after seeing. William in a taxi with a girl; he had said he was in Manchester that week and couldn’t visit the children. Sheila ran beside the taxi until it turned to go down the hill and a Bentley ran into it. You could hear the impact quite plainly. Sheila hoped he had broken his neck. She couldn’t make sure because she had to collect the children from school. But then Sheila was vindictive; she didn’t understand William. He was a beautiful person. For all his compartments, he was undeniably a golden boy.
Outside it grew light. There was a roll of swollen cloud, red above the rooftops. Edna faded, became grey and tired. Ann lay slumped on the floor.
The golden boy returned at seven o’clock. If he was surprised at seeing the two of them together, he hid it. He hesitated on the threshold of the unfurnished room. Whom should he embrace first? He kissed Edna, touched the breast of her nightdress, bent towards Ann cowering on the floor. She thought she might be sick.
‘William,’ said Edna. ‘You have to give some answers.’
Ann waited to hear the questions.
William lay down on the white squares of linoleum. He cupped his hands under his head and closed his eyes.
‘Are you going to stay here, living with Ann?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t intend to come back home?’
‘No.’
Ann wanted to ask what Pamela had been doing in Liverpool. But she knew. Instead she whispered into the crook of her arm, ‘Do you love me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you want a divorce then?’ asked Edna.
‘No,’ said William.
Ann knew she must go straight back to Nethersole Road and never see William again. She mustn’t let him through the door. She would change the locks, bar the windows. When Edna had gone, she screamed and shouted at him. She thought that if she made enough noise she wouldn’t hear what he said. He wouldn’t be able to confuse her and make her feel she had imagined it all. She threw his pictures from the shelf and jumped up and down on them.
‘Don’t do that,’ he said. ‘You’ll break the glass.’ He said he could explain everything, if only she would empty her mind of pride and ownership. Love was all that counted. He was here, wasn’t he?
‘Be quiet,’ she screamed.
Why, he persisted, was he here, if he didn’t need to be?
‘God knows’, she raged. ‘Maybe Pamela thinks you’ve popped out to the dentist. Or you’re looking at graveyards.’
‘Don’t talk like that,’ he said, as if she uttered obscenities. ‘I’m here because I want to be. Can’t you see that?’ He seemed genuinely puzzled.
‘No, I can’t,’ she cried. ‘I don’t think you know where you are. There’s so many of us, you’ve got confused.’
She was thinking of Pamela. The thought that Pamela had been in Liverpool made her want to kill him.
He said cunningly, ‘You left me to go home to your mother. You let me be on my own.’
She sprang at him. She beat at his chest with her fists.
‘Go away,’ she said. ‘Get away from me.’
He bore the blows stoically; he watched her with sad forgiving eyes. He refused to budge.
‘Very well,’ she cried. ‘You stay.’ And she ran out of the house not bothering to close the door. It was raining and she was without her shoes.
She phoned Mrs Kershaw from a box in the next street. ‘I want to come back,’ she said. ‘I have to come back.’
‘There’s the roof,’ said Mrs Kershaw.
Ann said sternly, ‘There’s nothing wrong with the roof.’
‘It’s damaged,’ Mrs Kershaw insisted.
‘I can’t answer for what may happen if you don’t let me have my flat back. It’s terribly important.’
‘I’ll let you know,’ said Mrs Kershaw.
‘I have to know now.’
‘Well, I can’t tell you right away. I’m going up north in a few days’ time and I’m rather busy at the moment. Naturally, I’ll have to talk to Roddy.’
William had left when Ann returned. He had taken with him his picture of Dennis Law.
‘Good riddance,’ she shouted triumphantly, squelching about the room in her saturated stockings, a brave smile on her lips.
She didn’t wait for Mrs Kershaw to talk to Roddy. She visited her that afternoon. She told her what had happened – the train, Pamela, Edna, the nightly rides that were never in the direction of his children. Mrs Kershaw was appalled. She didn’t say much, but the roses left her cheeks; even her lips turned pale. In one sense, thought Ann, Mrs Kershaw was partly to blame. If she hadn’t been so free with her bicycle, William might never have had the energy to make so many contacts.
6
It was such a relief to be back in Nethersole Road that Ann was almost happy – for a short while, a matter of days. His desk had gone, those beautiful shirts in the wardrobe, the bunches of socks, the folded handkerchiefs. Even the nights lying in the double bed proved not to be such an ordeal as she had feared. It was only a bed. It had existed before she had known him, had accommodated Douglas from the BBC and Gerald. It wasn’t exclusive to William. So she told herself.
Mrs Kershaw didn’t go up North. She said the children objected to being left with Roddy. Ann offered to help, but Mrs Kershaw said she’d changed her mind. She didn’t want to go any more. She seemed subdued, less buoyant. Her feet went flat-footedly over the gravel to the bins. She put the bicycle in the back garden, as if out to grass.
She was good to Ann. She came upstairs of an evening to keep her company. She began to make a little mug for the baby, glazed in blue. She thought it was better for Ann t
o discuss her problems, instead of bottling them up inside. Why did Ann think William had told his wife about her in the first place? What had he said in the hotel in Crewe? When did she first suspect that he was seeing Pamela? Mrs Kershaw probed. She questioned.
‘At the beginning, did he seem sincere?’
‘Terribly,’ said Ann. ‘Oh, he was terribly sincere. At least, that first week.’
‘But then,’ said Mrs Kershaw, ‘you said he never went out.’
‘Yes,’ admitted Ann. ‘Well, except, you know? to visit the children.’
‘But he didn’t visit them, did he?’
‘Oh, he did,’ she cried defensively. ‘Not every night I grant you, but he did sometimes.’ She felt spiteful towards Mrs Kershaw. ‘That bicycle of yours,’ she said with a rueful smile, trying to make a joke of it.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Kershaw dully. ‘That bloody bike.’
It destroyed Ann’s calm, the nightly interrogations. The dreams began again, the waving from departure bays. She woke in the night calling his name. She heard Edna asking him if he wanted a divorce. Her heart beat loudly. She waited. The cars went by. William said no. She put her hands fearfully upon her stomach. She was never going to be a wife but undoubtedly she was going to be a mother. What was going to happen to her? How would she manage? She thought she would try to get her old job back at the BBC. She could tell them she had left to be married.
When she received her bank statement, she was astonished to find it had been credited with three hundred pounds. It could only have been William. Did it mean he loved her?
She rang Edna. No, Edna hadn’t seen him for some days, but then he was up north in Glasgow. He was quite alone. Pamela was on holiday in Barcelona. The play was due to come on in the West End in August.
‘He’s put money in my bank,’ said Ann.
‘Aye,’ Edna said. ‘He’s very good with money.’
After some thought, Ann wrote to Gerald. She said—
If I hurt you, you will be pleased to know that I am being punished for it. That man I told you of, has left me and I am having a baby. It seems a long time ago since I said goodbye to you. We did have pleasant times, didn’t we?
Sweet William Page 13
