Into Exile

by Joan Lingard

  She turned and walked out. As she walked she raged inside. He had lied to her, he hadn’t gone out to play darts … The rage alternated with grief. She had lost him. What would she do with herself now? Crawl back to Belfast and tell her mother, ‘He walked out on me’? And then the anger returned again. If he wanted to spend his evenings in the pub talking to other girls instead of her he wasn’t worth having!

  She found herself on the tube. She went to Rita’s without thinking. Rita was making up her face ready to go out. She sat at the mirror fixing on her eyelashes, listening whilst Sadie recounted the tale of Kevin and his treachery.

  ‘Told you, didn’t I, duckie?’ Rita wiggled the lashes to make sure they were firm.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ wailed Sadie.

  ‘Come to the disco with us. Enjoy yourself. Have a good time. Forget him.’

  ‘I can’t go like this.’ Sadie looked down at the reddish stain on her skirt.

  ‘I’ll lend you something.’ Rita raked amongst the clothes in her wardrobe, taking out several things on their hangers and holding them against Sadie. ‘Not your colour. Too wide. What about this?’ She held out a long purple dress decorated with gold braid.

  ‘All right,’ said Sadie.

  She put it on and Rita exclaimed with admiration. It was just the thing for Sadie.

  ‘You can have it,’ she said.

  ‘Not to keep,’ said Sadie.

  ‘Why not? I never wear it now. I only wear something a few times and then I get fed up with it.’

  She did Sadie’s hair, backcombing it and arranging it in elaborate swirls round her ears. Then she made up Sadie’s face, covering the area round the eyes with several colours, finally fixing on a pair of false eyelashes. With them on Sadie felt a blinkered horse. She sat passively, allowing Rita to take her over and make her into whatever she wanted.

  ‘I feel like Cinderella going to the ball,’ giggled Sadie.

  ‘Wait till Joe sees you!’

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘Yeh. He’ll be there.’

  He was. He swooped upon Sadie immediately. She allowed herself to be gathered up. She felt like a different person. The real Sadie had been left behind with her old clothes. Now she went through the motions of being a girl in a purple dress with false eyelashes and crimson lips with the feeling that she was looking on, that she was not really there. She took a glass when she was given it and drank. The liquid scalded her throat, warmed her stomach, went to her head. She drank another glass. She began to giggle, to lean on Joe’s shoulder. He pulled her closer to him.

  ‘I knew you’d give in,’ he murmured.

  The tempo of the music increased, the lights whirled in the room, Sadie’s head spun like a top. She pushed Joe away from her.

  ‘Back in a minute,’ she muttered.

  She went to the ladies’ room. Sweat broke out on her forehead. She stood in the small cubicle steadying herself with one hand against the clammy wall. The floor tilted. And then she was sick.

  Afterwards, she stood with her back against the wall, her head up. She breathed deeply, feeling the beat of her heart return to normal. The cloakroom was empty. She was thankful that Rita had not followed her. She looked in the mirror and saw that she was death-white. She pulled off the eyelashes, feeling them tug at her own underneath. She did not care now, she did not care about anything except to get home to Kevin. She splashed water over her face, scooping it from under the running tap into her cupped hands. The cold made her skin tingle; the sensation of being alive was gradually returning. The roller towel was grubby. She dried her face round the edge of it. When she looked in the mirror again she laughed: the make-up had run and she was a terrible-looking sight!

  She put on her coat, opened the door cautiously. No one was about. The noise boomed out from the discotheque. She scurried along the corridor, passed the doorman and was out in the street. The night was cold and fresh and stars streaked the sky above the rooftops. The fresh air felt good.

  People stared at her on the tube but she did not care. She was going home. Home to Kevin.

  When she came out of the station she picked up her skirts and ran all the way to their street. She was breathless when she reached their house. The light was on: he was home.

  For a moment she stood in the porch calming the rapid gulps of breath. The felt-slippered woman shuffled along the corridor, holding something in her arms.

  ‘One of my cats has died,’ said the woman, showing Sadie the dead cat.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Sadie.

  ‘Mrs Kyrakis said to put it in the dustbin. She’s got no soul that woman. I’m going to bury him.’

  ‘But there’s no soil round here,’ said Sadie. At the back of the house there was only a concrete yard.

  ‘I’m taking him to the nearest park,’ said the woman.

  ‘Will they let you bury him there?’

  ‘I don’t care if they won’t let me. I’m going to.’

  The woman shuffled out into the night, in her slippers, her cat in her arms. Sadie watched her go, thinking how terrible it was that so many people should be alone. Then she faced the door and turned the handle.

  Kevin sat on the edge of the bed. His face was set, his eyes dark.

  ‘Kevin!’ she cried. ‘I’m so glad to be home.’

  ‘What have you got on?’ He looked at the dress.

  ‘It’s Rita’s.’

  ‘And your face!’

  ‘I was sick, you see, and then I washed it –’

  ‘You look as if you’ve been sick.’ His voice was hard and curt. ‘You look like a tart!’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  She hated him. She stood with her back against the door staring at him and hating him. She had never imagined it would be possible that she would come to hate him. Anger coiled inside her like a snake.

  ‘What did you call me?’ she asked.

  ‘A tart,’ he said, looking her full in the eye.

  ‘You’ve a queer nerve on you! Fenian git!’ She spat the words out at him. They came from the centre of her where they had lain for years. ‘Dirty ould pape!’

  He sprang up, seized her by the shoulders.

  ‘Take that back or I’ll –’

  ‘You’ll what?’ Her lip curled.

  ‘I’ll walk out of here and never come back.’ He dropped his hands from her shoulders and walked to the window. He pulled back the curtain and stood looking out into the street. Now she felt afraid. If he had been angry and shaken her or screamed insults back at her she could have coped with it better. Once he would have given vent to his anger. When she had first met him he had been like that, ready to fight. But he had changed.

  Why did he have to stand at that window with his back half-turned to her? Why didn’t he look her in the eye? She liked to fight face to face. She should have stayed at the discotheque. She could have been laughing and dancing and enjoying herself.

  She could have had Rita and the other girls to talk to and giggle with. She could have had Joe’s arms round her.

  ‘I don’t know why I bothered coming home,’ she said. ‘Not to a sour-faced ould git like you!’

  ‘I don’t know why you bothered coming home either.’

  ‘You’d just as soon I hadn’t, wouldn’t you?’

  He did not answer her. She moved restlessly about the other end of the room. She caught sight of herself in the little mirror above the sink. Blotched eyes, streaks of black down her cheeks. She did not care.

  ‘I can always go back to Rita’s,’ she said.

  ‘Go if you want.’

  She did not want to: that was the trouble. The thought of crawling into Rita’s flat at this hour of the morning …

  It was raining. Little slivers of water were running down the window. He watched one run from the top to the bottom.

  ‘You can go if you want,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing to me.’

  He said nothing. He heard the water running in the sink. She was washing her face. A cat came
padding quietly by on all fours not paying any attention to the rain. Now Sadie was cleaning her teeth. Each sound was familiar to him. He liked to lie in bed and watch her clean her teeth. She did it thoroughly, her whole body moving as she brushed.

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ she said.

  She began to brush her hair. The hair crackled under the bristles.

  The rain was thickening. The slivers turned to a sheet of water washing over the pane, shrouding the room from the street.

  ‘Have you lost your tongue?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s raining,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll get wet then, won’t you?’

  The bed springs creaked.

  ‘If you’re going to stand there all night you can put the light out,’ she said. ‘I’m wanting to go to sleep.’

  The springs twanged as she turned over. He looked round now and saw her lying in the centre of the bed, her body curled, her head on the pillow with her hands beside it, her eyes closed. He stood and looked at her in silence. One of her eyelids lifted, quickly dropped again. His mouth twitched. She began to breathe deeply as if to suggest sleep. She looked like a child with her freshly brushed hair and clean face. And yet she was not.

  ‘You don’t look like a tart at all,’ he said.

  She opened the eye fully, kept it open.

  ‘I was just mad at you for coming in late,’ he said. ‘I thought you might be out with that Joe guy.’

  She sat up, both eyes fully open now. ‘Kevin –’ She bit her lip. ‘I was dancing with him. But I didn’t go to the disco with him, honest I didn’t. I went with Rita.’

  Kevin felt his throat tightening. ‘But you knew you’d see him there?’

  ‘Yes but –’

  ‘But nothing. You knew you’d see him. And you got dressed up and –’

  ‘It was only because I saw you in the pub with those two girls,’ she cried, cutting across him.

  ‘Those two girls? You came into the pub? But I was only talking to them.’

  ‘You looked as if you were enjoying yourself rightly,’ she said, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. ‘You were laughing like a drain.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with laughing, is there?’

  ‘Depends.’

  She caught a thread in the bed cover and twisted it round her finger. She stared down at the thread cutting into her flesh. She pulled it tighter and watched the blood come and go in her finger.

  He took two steps nearer her. ‘You were jealous of me, were you?’

  ‘You were jealous of Joe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked up. Her eyes were wide and green. He sat down on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Sadie, I don’t want to go anywhere.’

  Suddenly her arms were around him and he felt her wet tears on his neck.

  ‘I thought you did,’ she said.

  ‘I’d never leave you.’

  ‘Never?’

  He promised her.

  ‘I’m sorry I called you all those names.’ Now she was half laughing and half crying. ‘You say terrible things to one another in a row, don’t you?’

  ‘You do that,’ he said.

  As usual he was asleep before she was, in a deep, sound sleep that would last until the alarm bell rang. She lay on her back, wide awake, listening to the rise and fall of his breathing. It had almost been the end of them. It frightened her to think it could have happened so easily. She did not understand how it was so easy one minute to love someone so much that it almost hurt and, the next, hate him more than she had ever hated anyone in her life. She must ask Lara. But Lara would only smile. She would never admit to hating Krishna.

  Sadie slept fitfully, dreaming of Lara and Krishna and Orangemen marching and starving children. She awoke before Kevin, slipped out of bed and switched on the fire and radio. It was bitter cold in the room, a cold that entered her bones and made her shiver. Her head felt like lead and her stomach was on fire. She scurried back into bed again, waking Kevin when she put her cold feet on his.

  ‘Ouch!’ He stretched and yawned.

  They listened to the news. Another night of violence in Belfast. Bombs, fires, people fleeing for safety. Sadie sighed.

  ‘And there were we fighting last night,’ she said. ‘We’ve little to trouble us compared with them.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It makes you see how stupid we can be.’

  He sprang out of bed saying Siberia couldn’t be any worse than this. She lifted her head from the pillow and let it sink back again.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Your face is the colour of the sheet.’

  ‘I feel as if I’ve the ’flu,’ she said weakly.

  ‘You’ll have to stay in bed then.’ He tucked the blanket round her shoulder.

  She hated lying in bed, had never been able to stand it. Long hours dragging by … She tried to sit up.

  ‘Lie down!’ said Kevin. ‘And I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘All right,’ she agreed weakly. Her strength seemed to have drained away during the night, and when Kevin gave her the cup her hand trembled and tea slopped on the bed covers. ‘I really feel quite bad,’ she said.

  ‘You’re going to be a few days off work by the looks of you.’

  A few days. To lie here alone listening to the sounds of the street. At home there would have been neighbours and her mother coming in and out. She had never spent so much time on her own until she came to London.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sadie tossed and turned, shivered and sweated, slept and dreamt. She dreamt of Orangemen marching in their dark suits and bowler hats, carrying their banners, their sashes gleaming orange and purple and gold. The bands played, drums banging deep and loud, the flutes tootling thin and high. They were marching, marching two abreast, keeping step; they were coming to fetch her for marrying a pape …

  She awoke in a heavy sweat, her pyjamas sticking to her skin, the sheets damp around her, her hair heavy and matted on the pillow. The light in the room was grey: the day must have worn on into late afternoon.

  She lay on her back, clammy now in the dampness, weak and exhausted.

  ‘Kevin,’ she called in a little voice that did not seem to be hers, but he did not answer. He was at work of course. He was never here when she needed him.

  The house was quiet: most of the tenants would be at work. Someone was shuffling about the passage. Children played outside, screaming and yelling. She was glad of the sound of the children.

  Kevin came when the room was in dusk and light shone in the street. He put on the light over her head and she winced for it hurt her eyes.

  ‘Sadie!’ he cried. ‘You’re really ill. I’ll have to get the doctor.’

  ‘We haven’t got one,’ she said.

  ‘There must be one round about.’

  She was too limp to bother. She allowed him to help her change her pyjamas and the sheets and then she lay back exhausted again. He looked so worried that she caught his hand and smiled at him.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, and fell asleep.

  But he was worried. It was terrible to see Sadie, usually so full of life, felled so quickly and thoroughly. Her fever was running high, her breath laboured. Illness worried him, and frightened him.

  Mrs Kyrakis opened her door after he had knocked insistently for five minutes.

  ‘My wife is ill,’ he began.

  ‘Ill?’ She looked suspicious.

  ‘Just ’flu I think.’

  ‘You think?’ She tugged her skirt round her fat stomach to straighten it. An inch of greyish underskirt showed below. She was frowning heavily. ‘I hope not anything infectious. I have many lodgers to consider.’

  ‘Oh, not infectious,’ said Kevin. ‘I just wondered if you could tell me where to get a doctor.’

  ‘You find one on the main road near the shops.’ She closed the door.

  Kevin ran to the main road, saw the doctor’s brass plate at once. He went into the h
ouse and explained the situation to the receptionist.

  ‘If you’re not Dr Bell’s patients –’ She shook her head.

  ‘But we’re not anybody’s patients,’ said Kevin desperately.

  ‘Where are you registered?’

  ‘In Belfast. But surely –’

  ‘I could ask Dr Bell to call tomorrow,’ said the woman.

  ‘Can’t he come this evening?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. He’s a very busy man, he has a surgery this evening and the waiting room is full of patients.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Kevin wearily. ‘I’ll see if I can get someone else.’

  He walked home slowly.

  At home his family doctor would have come straight away. No one cared in London. You could be dying … Of course Sadie could not be dying. He began to run.

  A light shone from Lara’s window. She was sitting in the room with her husband watching television. Krishna answered the door to Kevin’s knock.

  ‘My wife’s ill,’ said Kevin, ‘and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Ill?’ said Lara’s voice behind Krishna.

  ‘Yes, she’s got a terrible fever,’ said Kevin. ‘I’m right worried about her.’

  Lara joined Krishna at the door. Her eyes were concerned.

  ‘You had better come in,’ said Krishna.

  The invitation was so unexpected that it was a second or so before Kevin realized that he was actually being asked to come in. He stepped inside their room and Krishna closed the door behind him. The room smelled of curry and other spices. He saw that they too had to cook and live in the same room.

  ‘Please sit down,’ said Lara as graciously as if she lived in a silken drawing room.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  The springs had gone in the chair he was offered, just like their own chairs. But the room was bright. Lara had hung Indian prints against the walls and over the chairs. The baby slept in a cot at the far end with a screen around him. On a table stood a pile of books and loose leaf folders.