by Stan Barstow
'A what?'
'A sneck-lifter.'
'But what on-'
'You know the old-fashioned iron latches on cottage doors? Well we call them snecks in Yorkshire.'
'And what's a sneck-lifter?'
I use it for the first drink but I think it really means a couple of bob to get you out of the house.'
'Oh.'
Well, and then we'll find a restaurant and have a good nosh-up and a bottle of bowjolly, then stroll back.'
'And what then?'
'A nice early night with a good read in bed - you in your small corner and I in mine.'
'It sounds dull, the last part.'
'Oh, we'll probably think of something else as the evening goes on.'
Will I be able to think of anything else, though? I'm wondering. It'll hover over the next few hours like a promise. And Oh God, don't let me balls it up again. How to combine restraint with so much delight. It's unbearable. I help her into her coat and we go out and along the corridor to the lift. The dining-room's busy but the lobby's quiet with the sound of a man laughing in the cocktail bar the only thing that breaks through. We drop our keys on to the desk and go through the heavy glass doors, out of the central heating into the cold of the street. As we step smartly out along the pavement, our heels clicking in the crisp air, I'm suddenly visited by a feeling of the great anonymous mass of London sprawling round us on every side and I'm hit by an enormous happiness that almost takes my breath away. My legs - my whole body, in fact -seem to tingle with the electricity of it, and I know why people dance for joy.
The restaurant we wind up in is a little Italian place with dim lights, soft music coming through off a tape, a corner table for two, and a menu that Donna has to interpret for me. When we've ordered we light cigarettes and exchange little looks and smiles again.
Here we are, then.'
'Yes.'
'You had no trouble getting away?'
'No. I thought at one time that Fleur was going to wish herself on to me, but I said I was staying with friends. What about you?'
It's not a week-end when I should have been going home, anyway. Albert has a pretty good idea what's going on but a nod's as good as a wink to him.'
'I suppose he's got to know.'
'Well, we live on top of each other. We established a pattern pretty quickly after I got down here and I can't really ever see you in Longford without him knowing. I mean, in a way he covers up for us with your friends.'
'Somebody there's going to realize before very long. It's inevitable.'
'Will it matter?'
'No, I don't think so. Actors are like old women sometimes, the way they like to gossip. But there are things they keep their own counsel about. Besides, they wouldn't think it a staggering scandal. They've seen it all before.'
'It's different in the theatre.'
She smiles a little. 'I don't mean we spend all our time playing musical beds. There are people who are promiscuous and those who aren't. But it's not a world-shaking act when two people do go to bed with each other. They can do it simply because they're lonely and want to give each other a little warmth.'
Her gaze is down on where she's rolling the lighted end of her cigarette on the rim of the ash-tray.
'And it doesn't make it any less important when you really love somebody.'
I want to think she means me but I've got a sudden intuition that just at this moment her mind's on somebody else from somewhere in her past, a past I hardly know about and can't share. Which doesn't matter. Nor, I tell myself, does the future. It's a great temptation to want now to be a promise for time to come but it would be a mistake to spoil it by thinking of all the complications that lie ahead.
'Shall I tell you something?' I say.
'What?'
'I've never been to bed with somebody I was really in love with.'
She doesn't answer.
'I mean, I've told you about Ingrid and me.'
She nods. 'Yesr'
I wonder what she'd think if I said I'd only ever been to bed with one woman at all, and I think that that's a bit green even for a provincial lad.
'Have there been any more letters?'
'No, just the second one I told you about." He's still seeing her."'
'Yes.'
'We had a blazing row. It lasted all week-end.'
'You said so.'
I think she wanted to come down then just to have a look at you, but her mother got the call to go into hospital.'
'Shall I have to meet her sometime?'
'I suppose so. She'll think it's funny if she comes down and doesn't see you.'
'She'll be coming down for good eventually, won't she?'
I shrug. I can't think about that, face what it implies. It's somewhere in the vague future.
'I hate it,' Donna says. 'You going home to suspicion and rows...'
'But don't you see, that would have happened anyway. The letters took care of that. We could be completely innocent as far as all that's concerned.'
'Except we're not.'
No, and I don't care.' I reach across the table and take her hand. 'Donna... I said I don't care.'
She nods. 'All right. It's all right.'
A little later the mood seems to pass and we're cheerful together again, happy that we're here alone, away from prying eyes, with tonight and tomorrow and tomorrow night to share. I could wonder, as I have before, what she sees in me to make her be here. She's never said she loves me in so many words. But words like that don't matter. She's here and I love her. I know it later still, when my feeling for her has passed the only test except that of time and we're lying together in the narrow bed in her room, the full silky length of her beside me as she asks:
'Happy, darling?'
'You've no idea.'
She gives a contented little murmur in her throat. A floor board in the corridor creaks and there's the sound of a key scraping into a lock followed by the thump of the door as somebody comes into the next room. In a moment the pipes clunk and gurgle a bit as some water's run. Then everything's quiet again except for the traffic noises from the main road. I expected I'd want to sleep but though my body's relaxed my mind's wide awake... So this is it, my mind says. I'm now morally and legally at fault. Well, legally without a doubt, grounds having been well and truly established. But if the law is some kind of reflection of morality, in this case it's a nit. Because I reckon that a marriage that founders on the odd act of adultery has had something rotten happening to it before. And morality? There's a queer old kettle offish. Go to bed with another woman you love and you're outside the pale; but masturbate into the body of your wife on a Saturday night and you're only exercising your conjugal rights, and everything is nice and respectable and normal. Where can you come to grips with what it's all about? In not using other people for your own ends? Yes, I'll go along with that. In not hurting somebody else? But where does your responsibility to other people cross with responsibility towards yourself? And how far can you sacrifice one for the sake of the other? I've a strong suspicion that goodwill on its own won't do.
Questions, teeming through my mind. But academic; somehow seen clearly but remotely, not touching my contentment now. And not, as might well have happened, rolling in in the wake of the first rush of guilt. Because there is no guilt; nothing like what I felt with Ingrid all that long time ago; when I felt I'd both used her and debased myself. No, nothing like that at all. Donna stirs beside me, resettling her head against my shoulder.
'Hello.'
'Hello.'
'What are you doing here?'
'I'm with a man.'
'Nice feller?'
'Mmmm.'
'What's special about him?'
'Oh, all kinds of things ... He's gentle and kind and he's got a sort of steadiness and honesty about him ...'
'That's a laugh.'
'What is?'
'The honesty bit.'
'Why?'
'Because he's a deceitful, lying bastar
d.'
'Not a bastard. But the other thing .. . it's more complicated than that.'
Yes... When did you first realize I wanted you? It was before the letter, wasn't it?'
Yes. At the party. The way you looked at me after you'd kissed me. And I knew it meant more to you than a quick kill.'
'And what about me with you?'
'That was later the same night. You were sitting on the sofa, surrounded by people but all on your own. You looked so lonely and I asked you what you were thinking.'
'I remember. I wanted to bury my head in your lap ... That letter-writer did me a favour. I don't think I'd have dared say anything otherwise.'
'Why not?'
'Oh, you seemed out of my reach; in a world full of men who talked your language and were a lot more interesting than me.'
'Actresses do fall in love outside the profession quite often, you know.'
'I suppose so.' -
In fact, it's better if it happens that way. The other thing can be hell.'
'It seemed impossible, though. It was one night when we were in the Mitre and you were talking to a couple of people. I was watching the way you ran your finger round the bottom of your glass and all of a sudden I felt a fierce ache right through me. Not wanting to take you to bed; just wanting to share a feeling with you, to know I was somebody special as far as you were concerned. The actual sex came later... as you know ...'
'You're scared of sex, aren't you?'
'What makes you say that?'
'You're scared it'll show your feelings to be a sham.'
'Ah... It has been known to happen, you know. And anyway, I'm really a very puritanical north-country boy at heart.'
'Yes... But lovely... and very, very good to be with.'
'Am I?'
'Mmmm. I don't know how to describe it... I feel as if I've been stroked all over inside.'
My mouth finds hers and then my fingertips, light as butterfly wings, are exploring the contours of her face that I can't see in the dark. And I'm filled with a wonder and tenderness and gratitude that carry me to the edge of tears.
Guilt, no. Anxiety, yes. I wake up late on the second morning in my own room, with it crawling round my guts like a maggot of doom. Enjoy Now and let the Future alone. Yes, I have done. But the week-end's all but over and where do we go from here_? What happens now? There can't be another break like this for some time because of Donna's commitments at the theatre. Can we carry it off in Longford without our anonymous friend keeping Ingrid posted? And with her mother out of hospital now it can't be more than a couple of months or so before Ingrid'll be down here to live. Without the letters I could have taken advantage of Ingrid's reluctance and let her stall as long as she wanted to. But now she smells danger and she'll want to do everything she can to protect what's hers. Me.
All I ask for now is time. Time with opportunity. Time to sort it all out at my pace and not that forced on me by somebody else...
'You have seen her again, haven't you?'
'Well of course I have. I'm not going to let a couple of anonymous letters affect me.'
'And there's nothing between you?'
'I've told you.'
'Yes.'
She's confused and distressed, not knowing what to believe; and I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The letters are right in what they imply. But that's beside the point. She doesn't know this for sure and it would be all the same if I were innocent. Would it? Wouldn't innocence give me the power to reassure her in a convincing way? No, I don't love her enough for that. It's one of the penalties of being married to me. She ought to know it by now and not ask for more than I can give. It's the dormant things in our marriage that the letters have agitated; and there's their real foulness, what can never make them well-intentioned and right. There's no way for the writer to know the balance of the relationship he's interfering with, what kind of fuses his words are lighting and what kind of charges they're connected to.
'I suppose it's no good me asking you to give that job up and come back here?'
'What, and let her rule our lives?'
'Her?'
'Well him, then. Or it. I don't know.'
'I think it's her.'
'Who?'
"This girl.'
'What!'
'I think she's writing them.'
'But what in hell's name for?'
'To get you away from me.'
'Oh, for Christ's sake! She's had one herself.'
"That could be a blind. To stop you suspecting.'
'Look, don't make me think you're more stupid than you are.'
'I suppose she's bright and intelligent. I suppose you can talk to her about all the things I don't understand.'
'Look, for Christ's sake will you shut up about her! Will you just shut up!'
My watch says ten-fifteen. There's a tap at the door. I shout come in, thinking it's the chambermaid, but when there's no sound of a key going into the lock I get out of bed and open the door to find Donna.
'Did I wake you?'
She brushes by me in a wave of scent and freshness, looking at me in my crumpled pyjamas, unwashed, unshaved, my hair tousled, and at the still warm unmade bed. There's a gleam of amusement in her eyes.
'You know you've missed breakfast?'
'I'm not bothered.'
'I've had fruit juice and cornflakes, egg, bacon and sausages, and toast and marmalade.'
'Sadist. It sounds horrible. I'll have a kiss now and a cup of coffee later.'
She backs away after the first kiss.
'That's your ration for now.'
'I suppose I don't look much like God's gift to women just at the moment.'
'I don't mind. But the maids are on the landing.'
'We don't want a queue, do we?'
She laughs.
'I'll get dressed, then. Shan't be long.'
'Shall I wait downstairs?'
'No, don't go.'
'What about the maids?'
'Oh, bugger the maids. You don't think one of 'em's our anonymous friend in disguise, do you?'
'No, but-'
Anyway, they'd see you come in, so you won't be compromised.'
'You're getting bold, aren't you?'
'I'm just getting fed-up with being pushed around by somebody I don't even know.'
I run water into the basin and strip off my pyjama jacket. I want her to watch me wash and shave. I want to bring the intimacy of the little ordinary things into our relationship. There's no morning after with her. It's as valuable in its way as midnight.
'What's the plan for today?'
'We shall have to be out of here by twelve, I suppose.'
'Yes. Do you want to be back at any particular time?'
'No. I've been thinking. I'll skip the train and go back with you in the car.'
'Is that wise?'
'Oh, to hell with wisdom. We can spend the afternoon here and arrive back after dark. You could drop me off at the station. It's going to be tricky enough, so let's make the most of this while we can.'
'All right.'
Slopping water over myself at the basin I turn my head and look at her.
'As long as you haven't had too much of me.'
She shakes her head. 'No.'
'Would you mind passing me the toilet bag out of my case.'
She finds it and brings it across, reaching round me and at the same time placing one hand flat in the middle of my back. I'm suddenly overcome. I feel as if she's touched my bowels and I close my eyes for a moment as a wave of black, black despair rushes over me.
16
It doesn't last, of course, while we're together; but it visits me again in a diluted form that's a kind of defeatist feeling about the hopelessness of the whole thing after she's dropped me off outside Longford station and I'm walking home through a sudden thaw along the dark wet streets. When we're together we're very, very close; the moment we part a whole hostile world comes between us; and by Monday morning the week-end has begun to seem li
ke an impossible dream.
The new play opens on the Monday night. 'World Premiere,' the notices say, 'of Jack told my Father, a play by Wilf Cotton, author of Day after Day.' Donna says there'll be critics from the national dailies there as well as representatives of West End managements. It's a big night for the Palace and Conroy and I, sitting in the circle before the curtain goes up, look at the faces of the people in the front two rows to see if there's anybody famous we can recognize.
It's a kind of north-country family piece, as authentic as fish and chips, but with a curious offbeat way of looking at some things that brings you up short with a jolt every now and again. The Jack in the title is a brother who's gone away and made good and he represents something different to each of the family at home, who are all failures in some way. Until finally he comes back and it turns out that what Jack represents is Jack and they'll all have to stand on their own feet. Donna plays the younger brother's girl friend who Jack tries to make and who's the prune mover in blowing the gaff on the whole illusion.
The V.I.P.s have drinks in the producer's office afterwards and Albert and I repair to the Mitre to sink one or two on our own before going to Donna's where there's a later get-together. We go up the stairs carrying a few bottles of ale each and ring the bell. When nobody answers we walk in, dump our coats in the passage, and go into the crowded living-room. There's music coming from the record-player but it's background stuff and nobody's dancing. This is evidently a talking party and we edge past one or two groups standing nearest the door and make for the kitchen. We meet Donna coming out. Her face is flushed, as though she's too hot, been drinking too much, or had a difference of opinion with somebody.
