She put on a hat and a heavy coat because it was still cold at night; the spring was late that year, as her father commented, watching for the buds on the apple tree. She didn't pack a suitcase; that would have reminded her too much of week-ends at the sea, a family expedition to Ostend from all of which one returned; she wanted to match the odd reckless quality of Fred's mind. This time she wasn't going to return. She went softly downstairs into the little crowded hall, unlocked the door. All was quiet upstairs, and she closed the door behind her.
She was touched by a faint feeling of guilt because she couldn't lock it from the outside. But it had vanished by the time she reached the end of the crazy paved path and turned to the left down the road which after five years was still half-made, past the gaps between the villas where the wounded fields remained grimly alive in the form of thin grass and heaps of clay and dandelions.
She walked fast, passing a long line of little garages like the graves in a Portuguese cemetery where the coffin lies for ever below the fading photograph of its occupant. The cold night air touched her with exhilaration. She was ready for anything, as she turned by the Belisha beacon into the shuttered shopping street; she was like a recruit in the first months of a war. The choice made, she could surrender her will to the strange, the exhilarating, the gigantic event.
Fred, as he had promised, was at the corner where the road turned down towards the church; she could taste the spirit on his lips as they kissed, and she was satisfied that no one else could have so adequately matched the occasion; his face was bright and reckless in the lamplight, he was as exciting and strange to her as the adventure. He took her arm and ran her into a blind unlighted alley, then left her for a moment until two headlamps beamed softly at her out of the cavern. She cried with astonishment, "You've got a car?" and felt the jerk of his nervous hand urging her towards it. "Yes," he said, "do you like it?" grinding into second gear, changing clumsily into top as they came out between the shuttered windows.
She said, "It's lovely. Let's drive a long way."
"We will," he said, watching the speedometer needle go quivering to forty-five.
"Does it mean you've got a job?"
"There are no jobs," he said, "they don't exist any more than the Dodo. Did you see that bird?" he asked sharply, turning his headlights full on as they passed the turning to the housing estate and quite suddenly came out into the country between a café ("Draw in here"), a bootshop ("Buy the shoes worn by your favourite film star"), and an undertaker's with a large white angel lit by a neon light.
"I didn't see any bird."
"Not flying at the windscreen?"
"No."
"I nearly hit it," he said. "It would have made a mess. Bad as those fellows who run someone down and don't stop. Should we stop?" he asked, turning out his switchboard light so that they couldn't see the needle vibrate downwards to sixty.
"Whatever you say," she said, sitting deep in a reckless dream.
"You going to love me tonight?"
"Of course I am."
"Never going back there?"
"No," she said, abjuring the tap of hammer, the click of latch, the pad of slippered feet making the rounds.
"Want to know where we are going?"
"No." A little flat cardboard copse ran forward into the green light and darkly by. A rabbit turned its scut and vanished into a hedge.
He said, "Have you any money?"
"Half a crown."
"Do you love me?" For a long time she expended on his lips all she had patiently had to keep in reserve, looking the other way on Sunday mornings, saying nothing when his name came up at meals with disapproval. She expended herself against dry unresponsive lips as the car leapt ahead and his foot trod down on the accelerator. He said, "It's the hell of a life."
She echoed him, "The hell of a life."
He said, "There's a bottle in my pocket. Have a drink."
"I don't want one."
"Give me one then. It has a screw top," and with one hand on her and one on the wheel he tipped his head, so that she could pour a little whisky into his mouth out of the quarter bottle. "Do you mind?" he said.
"Of course I don't mind."
"You can't save," he said, "on ten shillings a week pocket-money. I lay it out the best I can. It needs a hell of a lot of thought. To give variety. Half a crown on Weights. Three and six on whisky. A shilling on the pictures. That leaves three shillings for beer. I take my fun once a week and get it over."
The whisky had dribbled on to his tie and the smell filled the small coupé. It pleased her. It was his smell. He said, "They grudge it me. They think I ought to get a job. When you're that age you don't realize there aren't any jobs for some of us—any more for ever."
"I know," she said. "They are old."
"How's your sister?" he asked abruptly; the bright glare swept the road ahead of them clean of small scurrying birds and animals.
"She's going to the hop tomorrow. I wonder where we shall be."
He wouldn't be drawn; he had his own idea and kept it to himself.
"I'm loving this."
He said, "There's a club out this way. At a road-house. Mick made me a member. Do you know Mick?"
"No."
"Mick's all right. If they know you, they'll serve you drinks till midnight. We'll look in there. Say hullo to Mick. And then in the morning—we'll decide that later when we've had a few drinks."
"Have you the money?" A small village, a village fast asleep already behind closed doors and windows, sailed down the hill towards them as if it were being carried smoothly by a landslide into the scarred plain from which they'd come. A long grey Norman church, an inn without a sign, a clock striking eleven. He said, "Look in the back. There's a suitcase there."
"It's locked."
"I forgot the key," he said.
"What's in it?"
"A few things," he said vaguely. "We could pop them for drinks."
"What about a bed?"
"There's the car. You aren't scared, are you?"
"No," she said. "I'm not scared. This is—" but she hadn't words for the damp cold wind, the darkness, the strangeness, the smell of whisky and the rushing car. "It moves," she said. "We must have gone a long way already. This is real country," seeing an owl sweep low on furry wings over a ploughed field.
"You've got to go farther than this for real country," he said. "You won't find it yet on this road. We'll be at the road-house soon."
She discovered in herself a nostalgia for their dark windy solitary progress. She said, "Need we go to the club? Can't we go farther into the country?"
He looked sideways at her; he had always been open to any suggestion: like some meteorological instrument, he was only made for the winds to blow through. "Of course," he said, "anything you like." He didn't give the club a second thought; they swept past it a moment later, a long lit Tudor bungalow, a crash of voices, a bathing pool filled for some reason with hay. It was immediately behind them, a patch of light whipping round a corner out of sight.
He said, "I suppose this is country now. They none of them get farther than the club. We're quite alone now. We could lie in these fields till doomsday as far as they are concerned, though I suppose a ploughman... if they do plough here." He raised his foot from the accelerator and let the car's speed gradually diminish. Somebody had left a wooden gate open into a field and he turned the car in; they jolted a long way down the field beside the hedge and came to a standstill. He turned out the headlamps and they sat in the tiny glow of the switchboard light. "Peaceful," he said uneasily; and they heard a screech owl hunting overhead and a small rustle in the hedge where something went to hiding. They belonged to the city; they hadn't a name for anything round them; the tiny buds breaking in the bushes were nameless. He nodded at a group of dark trees at the hedge end. "Oaks?"
"Elms?" she asked and their mouths went together in a mutual ignorance. The touch excited her; she was ready for the most reckless act; but from his mouth, the d
ry spiritous lips, she gained a sense that he was less excited than he had hoped to be.
She said, to reassure herself, "It's good to be here -miles away from anyone we know."
"I dare say Mick's there. Down the road."
"Does he know?"
"Nobody knows."
She said, "That's how I wanted it. How did you get this car?"
He grinned at her with wild unbalanced amusement. "I saved from the ten shillings."
"No, but how? Did someone lend it you?"
"Yes," he said. He suddenly pushed the door open and said, "Let's take a walk."
"We've never walked in the country before." She took his arm, and she could feel the tense nerves responding to her touch. It was what she liked; she couldn't tell what he would do next. She said, "My father calls you crazy. I like you crazy. What's all this stuff?" kicking at the ground.
"Clover," he said, "isn't it? I don't know." It was like being in a foreign city where you can't understand the names on shops, the traffic signs: nothing to catch hold of, to hold you down to this and that, adrift together in a dark vacuum. "Shouldn't you turn on the headlamps?" she said. "It won't be so easy finding our way back. There's not much moon." Already they seemed to have gone a long way from the car; she couldn't see it clearly any longer.
"We'll find our way," he said. "Somehow. Don't worry." At the hedge end they came to the trees. He pulled a twig down and felt the sticky buds. "What is it? Beech?"
"I don't know."
He said, "If it had been warmer, we could have slept out here. You'd think we might have had that much luck, tonight of all nights. But it's cold and it's going to rain."
"Let's come in the summer," but he didn't answer.
Some other wind had blown, she could tell it, and already he had lost interest in her. There was something hard in his pocket; it hurt her side; she put her hand in. The metal chamber had absorbed all the cold there had been in the windy ride. She whispered fearfully, "Why are you carrying that?" She had always before drawn a line round his recklessness. When her father had said he was crazy she had secretly and possessively smiled because she thought she knew the extent of his craziness. Now, while she waited for him to answer her, she could feel his craziness go on and on and out of her reach, out of her sight; she couldn't see where it ended; it had no end, she couldn't possess it any more than she could possess a darkness or a desert.
"Don't be scared," he said. "I didn't mean you to find that tonight." He suddenly became more tender than he had ever been; he put his hand on her breast; it came from his fingers, a great soft meaningless flood of tenderness. He said, "Don't you see? Life's hell. There's nothing we can do." He spoke very gently, but she had never been more aware of his recklessness: he was open to every wind, but the wind now seemed to have set from the east: it blew like sleet through his words. "I haven't a penny," he said. "We can't live on nothing. It's no good hoping that I'll get a job." He repeated, "There aren't any more jobs any more. And every year, you know, there's less chance, because there are more people younger than I am."
"But why," she said, "have we come—?"
He became softly and tenderly lucid. "We do love each other, don't we? We can't live without each other. It's no good hanging around, is it, waiting for our luck to change. We don't even get a fine night," he said, feeling for rain with his hand. "We can have a good time tonight—in the car—and then—in the morning—"
"No, no," she said. She tried to get away from him. "I couldn't. It's horrible. I never said—“
"You wouldn't know anything," he said gently and inexorably. Her words, she could realize now, had never made any real impression; he was swayed by them but no more than he was swayed by anything: now that the wind had set, it was like throwing scraps of paper towards the sky to speak at all, or to argue. He said, "Of course we neither of us believe in God, but there may be a chance, and it's company, going together like that." He added with pleasure, "It's a gamble," and she remembered more occasions than she could count when their last coppers had gone ringing down in slot machines.
He pulled her closer and said with complete assurance, "We love each other. It's the only way, you know. You can trust me." He was like a skilled logician; he knew all the stages of the argument. She despaired at catching him out on any point but the promise: we love each other. That she doubted for the first time, faced by the mercilessness of his egotism. He repeated, "It will be company."
She said, "There must be some way..."
"Why must?"
"Otherwise people would be doing it all the timeeverywhere!"
"They are," he said triumphantly, as if it were more important for him to find his argument flawless than to find—well, a way, a way to go on living. "You've only got to read the papers," he said. He whispered gently, endearingly, as if he thought the very sound of the words tender enough to dispel all fear. "They call it a suicide pact. It's happening all the time."
"I couldn't. I haven't the nerve."
"You needn't do anything," he said. "I'll do it all."
His calmness horrified her. "You mean—you'd kill me?"
He said, "I love you enough for that. I promise it won't hurt you." He might have been persuading her to play some trivial and uncongenial game. "We shall be together always." He added rationally, "Of course, if there is an always," and suddenly she saw his love as a mere flicker of gas flame playing on the marshy depth of his irresponsibility. She had loved his irresponsibility, but now she realized that it was without any limit at all; it closed over the head. She pleaded, "There are things we can sell. That suitcase."
She knew that he was watching her with amusement, that he had rehearsed all her arguments and had an answer; he was only pretending to take her seriously. "We might get fifteen shillings," he said. "We could live a day on that—but we shouldn't have much fun."
"The things inside it?"
"Ah, that's another gamble. They might be worth thirty shillings. Three days, that would give us—with economy."
"We might get a job."
"I've been trying for a good many years now."
"Isn't there the dole?"
"I'm not an insured worker. I'm one of the ruling class."
"Your people, they'd give us something."
"But we've got our pride, haven't we?" he said with remorseless conceit.
"The man who lent you the car?"
He said, "You remember Cortez, the fellow who burnt his boats? I've burnt mine. I've got to kill myself. You see, I stole that car. We'd be stopped in the next town. It's too late even to go back." He laughed; he had reached the climax of his argument and there was nothing more to dispute about. She could tell that he was perfectly satisfied and perfectly happy. It infuriated her. "You've got to, maybe. But I haven't. Why should I kill myself? What right have you—?" She dragged herself away from him and felt against her back the rough massive trunk of the living tree.
"Oh," he said in an irritated tone, "of course if you like to go on without me." She had admired his conceit; he had always carried his unemployment with a manner: now you could no longer call it conceit: it was a complete lack of any values. "You can go home," he said, "though I don't quite know how—I can't drive you back because I'm staying here. You'll be able to go to the hop tomorrow night. And there's a whist-drive, isn't there, in the church hall? My dear, I wish you joy of home."
There was a savagery in his manner. He took security, peace, order, in his teeth and worried them so that she couldn't help feeling a little pity for what they had joined in despising: a hammer tapped at her heart, driving in a nail here and a nail there. She tried to think of a bitter retort, for after all there was something to be said for the negative virtues of doing no injury, of simply going on, as her father was going on for another fifteen years. But the next moment she felt no anger. They had trapped each other. He had always wanted this: the dark field, the weapon in his pocket, the escape and the gamble; and she less honestly had wanted a little of both worlds: ir
responsibility and a safe love, danger and a secure heart.
He said, "I'm going now. Are you coming?"
"No," she said. He hesitated; the recklessness for a moment wavered; a sense of something lost and bewildered came to her through the dark. She wanted to say, Don't be a fool. Leave the car where it is. Walk back with me, and we'll get a lift home, but she knew any thought of hers had occurred to him and been answered already: ten shillings a week, no job, getting older. Endurance was a virtue of one's fathers.
He suddenly began to walk fast down the hedge; he couldn't see where he was going; he stumbled on a root and she heard him swear. "Damnation"—the little commonplace sound in the darkness overwhelmed her with pain and horror. She cried out, " Fred. Fred. Don't do it," and began to run in the opposite direction. She couldn't stop him and she wanted to be out of hearing. A twig broke under her foot like a shot, and the owl screamed across the ploughed field beyond the hedge. It was like a rehearsal with sound effects. But when the real shot came, it was quite different: a thud like a gloved hand striking a door and no cry at all. She didn't notice it at first and afterwards she thought that she had never been conscious of the exact moment when her lover ceased to exist.
She bruised herself against the car, running blindly; a blue-spotted Woolworth handkerchief lay on the seat in the light of the switchboard bulb. She nearly took it, but no, she thought, no one must know that I have been here. She turned out the light and picked her way as quietly as she could across the clover. She could begin to be sorry when she was safe. She wanted to close a door behind her, thrust a bolt down, hear the catch grip.
It wasn't ten minutes' walk down the deserted lane to the road-house. Tipsy voices spoke a foreign language, though it was the language Fred had spoken. She could hear the clink of coins in slot machines, the hiss of soda; she listened to these sounds like an enemy, planning her escape. They frightened her like something mindless: there was no appeal one could make to that egotism. It was simply a Want to be satisfied; it gaped at her like a mouth. A man was trying to wind up his car; the selfstarter wouldn't work: he said, "I'm a Bolshie. Of course I'm a Bolshie. I believe—"
21 Stories Page 6
