by Helen Harris
When they returned from their honeymoon, of course Harry was still there. What really upset Alicia, what made her recognize that her marriage was not the watertight vessel in which she would be safe from Harry’s molestation for ever more, was that Harry’s behaviour had not changed. She had imagined marriage would clang down between them like an iron grille, but Harry didn’t give a fig for that. He went on ogling her and brushing up against her in the dark of the wings just as before. At first, she was indignant. Then she grew scared.
The months went by and Leonard’s nightly performances didn’t alter. At last, summoning all her courage, she put it to him: wasn’t something missing?
She was introduced to his temper, his terrible razor-sharp raging furies which swept down on you out of a clear blue sky and rampaged murderously about your ears. What, if you please, was she driving at? What exactly was she trying to suggest? Was she after high jinks, some sordid fun and games, was that it? Was that her idea of the purpose of the sacred institution of marriage?
But a few weeks afterwards, he brought himself to do it, reluctantly, against himself; such a brief, brusque performance that Alicia got so little pleasure from it, she was in no hurry to persuade him to repeat it. For many months, she endured her disappointment unquestioningly. Well, it wasn’t what it was cracked up to be, that was all. It wouldn’t be the first thing she had come across which failed to live up to expectations. She could get along without it. She had the four walls of marriage; was what was supposed to happen within them really that important? It was not until they had been married for nearly a year that a treacherous thought occurred to her; was it the act itself which had failed to live up to expectations, or was it Leonard? Would it be as sore and unexciting with someone else?
That first year set the pattern for their marriage; long weeks of silent nights with every once in a while, maybe when Leonard’s conscience pricked him, one of those brief grudging performances. She couldn’t say though, even with hindsight, when she had become unhappy. Happy, unhappy; once you had been an actress for long enough, it was frequently hard to tell which was which. You dressed one up as the other so much of the time; on stage all rouged and bouncing, when secretly your heart might be breaking, or weeping make-belief tears for the footlights when all the while you had a mad wish to giggle. She had so much to be happy about at the start of the marriage: the compliments, the flowers and the presents, the elevated status of being Mrs Leonard Queripel. During the day, she simply put the night out of her mind.
In time, she began to worry about the consequences, or rather the lack of them. She and Leonard had never talked about having children – he was hardly the fatherly sort, she now saw – but she had somehow assumed that in marriage they came without saying. She now realized that, at the rate she and Leonard were going, unless she said something they probably never would. Not that she was mad keen to start a family. She wasn’t at all sure about losing her looks and her figure. But a little girl would be sweet, a pretty little blonde girl she could hold by the hand and dress up in frilly dresses. Sometimes, idly, in the bath, she would make up names for her: Cicely or Polly or Belinda. She came to the conclusion that she wouldn’t mind about losing her figure at all.
She steeled herself to broach the subject to Leonard. She was prepared for fireworks but they were not forthcoming. Leonard simply shook his head, once, but with a dreadful stony certainty, and answered, ‘No, not for us, my dear.’
‘What?’ Alicia blurted out. ‘Never?’
Leonard clasped his hands in that maddeningly reasonable way he had and told her, ‘You know you married the theatre when you married me.’
‘Yes,’ said Alicia, ‘but,’ and then she had stopped, stopped dead and said nothing more on the subject until 1939. Because she had suddenly realized why it was she needed a baby so desperately urgently, and it was not something she could possibly admit to Leonard, not in a million years. She needed a baby precisely so as to get herself out of the theatre. She needed a baby to get herself away from the clutches of Harry Levy.
As wedded bliss with Leonard took on more and more of a tarnish, so Harry Levy shone the brighter. He was a big star by then; he had his name in lights. One day not far off he would leave the company for greater things, everyone knew that; it was only a question of when. There were days, when Leonard had been especially beastly to her, when the prospect of Harry’s departure made him almost irresistible. Almost, for she never forgot she was a married woman. Once or twice, it was true, she only remembered in an abstract sort of way, with a tiny cobwebby corner of her mind. But she had never – and half a century later she didn’t know any more if it was a cause for pride or an eternal regret – she had never forgotten entirely.
Harry never took the least bit of notice of it. He said he had seen through her and Leonard right away. He’d never understand why she married him. The first time he said as much, Alicia had been outraged. Leonard was away on company business for a day or two and she and Harry were having tea together in the Queen’s Hotel. There was dance music playing, Johnny Icebreaker’s Teatime Trio, and Harry’s foot was nudging her brazenly under the table, urging her to get up and dance with him. Well, nudges and winks and brushes in the wings were one thing; frank remarks were quite another.
Alicia bridled with indignation. ‘How dare you?’ she hissed.
Harry laughed. ‘Oh, spare me the melodrama, please,’ he smiled. ‘You know you agree with me.’
She hated him then and yet she went on putting up with him, Lord knows why, when a word to Leonard could have had him out on his ear. But a word to Leonard might have meant answering the question, ‘How long has this been going on for?’ and the answer would have undoubtedly threatened her precious sacred marriage. The answer was: ‘Since I first set eyes on him.’
Courting was not the word for what Harry had done all those years ago; he had besieged her. It was a campaign, like in a war, and she was not in the least surprised when the real war came that Harry turned out to be such a hero; she had known all along from the way he did battle for her that he had it in him.
Every time Leonard was called away on company business, Harry rolled up at the door of their lodgings like a bad penny. He took her to sit in the front, most expensive row of deck-chairs to listen to the afternoon concerts of the band. They went to Pevensey Bay and he pranced on the beach in the sunshine, a dark sun-tanned figure who flung himself headlong into the waves. She, as ill luck would have it, had her monthlies and had to sit watching him from the stony shore. He took her to tea at the Lilac Tea Rooms and, in public, in the middle of the Tea Rooms, he reached across with his cake fork and speared a piece of gateau off her plate. ‘Did you know,’ he teased her, sucking the rosette, letting it dissolve sweetly on his tongue, ‘that sugar flower is the very same colour as your eyes?’
Even when Leonard was there, he hadn’t been much inhibited; he still held her far too long and close in his arms on stage, he still breathed his warm garlicky breath on her neck in the dark of the wings. And she, like an idiot, she let him.
The rumpus was long overdue. Everyone, not only Leonard, was worried about their takings. But it was foolish of her to have spoken up for Harry. It was hardly surprising Leonard had flown off the handle. Had he known, she wondered ever after? Till his dying day, she had naturally never dared ask him. And when his dying day came, she had missed her moment. Was that what had made his temper that day particularly biting? Certainly, he spoke less and less well of Harry as Harry’s star ascended, but she had always assumed that was professional jealousy, and nothing to do with her. Why would Leonard be jealous over her when he seemed to want so little to possess her? But, from that day on, he ran Harry down remorselessly; he repeated scornfully that Harry had the common touch, he said that of course he wasn’t truly English, he didn’t have an Englishman’s honour. She was always shamefully glad when Leonard said that; it reminded her of why, whatever ridiculous notions she might now and again give in to, she could never
really run away with Harry Levy.
Then Harry went away to fight the real war and she never saw him again. He left her gladly, with heroism in his heart and his head held high. On his handsome face there was the serene conviction that he was right; he had offered her her chance, but she had declined to take it. He left her life just as he had entered it, strutting out stage left with his black hair tossing. And she –
They gave him a sumptuous farewell send-off. She wore the blue-and-white polka-dot which Harry liked best and she cheered with the throng, all rouged and smiling, even though deep down she thought her heart was breaking. She raised her glass and drank to his future, his future without her, and she wondered how she would ever conceal her grief if he were to be killed. All through the war, she followed Harry’s fortunes. She paid far more attention to those far-flung places than to the war in Europe. She devoured the news about North Africa and she was miserably jealous when in the last stages of the war he was sent to Italy, because of the ravishing Italian women. He wasn’t killed and, after the war, he went to America. He made his name in the movies and she was left with just his image on the silver screen, an image in which he was no longer Jewish but frequently Italian or Mexican or Greek.
She was left bricked up with Leonard, or that was what it felt like, bricked up within the four stout marital walls of which she had been so proud. How had she stuck it out for, was it really thirty-three years more? She knew how she had done it; she had made up a story. She had made up a story in which Leonard Queripel was the most splendid husband and the very best of men. He was always fine and upstanding, always true. He was her leading man and she followed him gladly all the days of her life. She told this story to herself so well and so often that she had ended up nearly believing it. Once Leonard was dead, it had of course been a great deal easier.
In the winter of 1939, she had steeled herself to speak to him once more about children. Time wasn’t standing still; she was pushing thirty. But Leonard said it would be madness to think of bringing children into such a topsy-turvy world. The times they lived in were not times in which any reasonable person would dream of starting a family.
Right after VE Day, she asked him once again. She was getting panicky then, for time was running out. There was no chance of getting her way by catching Leonard unawares; for years, on the rare occasions when he consented to perform his conjugal duty, he had used sturdy fail-safe precautions. But she got nowhere, as she had always known she would. Leonard was adamant. Plus he stopped gracing her with his rare favours for good and all.
She supposed she must have had her suspicions all along. There must have been signs which she had chosen to ignore. Well, was it surprising? What woman would want to find out such a thing about her husband? She would never forget that day in the boarding-house, no never, when Leonard had come in from the beach with that tall blond Gerald he was so fond of, Gerald in his small striped swimming trunks and Leonard in his baggy old shorts, and the two of them had gone up to Gerald’s room to look at some catalogues they had been discussing. Leonard had not come down again and in the end Alicia hadn’t been able to stand it. She had tiptoed up to Gerald’s second-floor room, his regular one, the one he had taken every summer and she had stood at the door, holding her breath and listening. She couldn’t hear anything much, just whispering and shuffling, but she had stood there as if paralysed, quite unable to bring herself to bend down and look in through the keyhole. At last she had tiptoed away and gone back down to the kitchen. When the pair of them finally came down, all healthy-looking from their outdoor exercise, she had served them tea and cake without a word. Because maybe there really was nothing to it. Maybe, in her suspicious way, she had made the whole thing up. Years later, there had been Mrs Pritchard’s son though, hadn’t there? And those cosy teas which Leonard used to have with him while she was out at work. There had been the little boys who did ‘Penny for the Guy’. No – Alicia knew what was right and proper. Year after year she had clung fast to her belief in marriage. She had made up her story and she had clung fast to that too. It had served her well, and it had served Alison. Everyone liked a little something, didn’t they, to sweeten their daily bread? Without Harry and without children, she didn’t have a great deal else.
So she took it quite calmly when it came, at first with a little hiccup and then smoothly, rising up to meet her. She was long ready. And, at first, yes, it was like paddling; the shock of the cold, which began at your feet and which you only connected with swimming when it reached your knees and went on rising. Not many swims, so often by the sea. But once, in the moonlight, icy, swimming the breast-stroke, with her arms spread wide for an embrace. Ahead of her, she could see his dark head bobbing and his hand beckoning her beyond her depth. There were thoughts. Swimming out into the sunrise. You were meant to have certain thoughts. And something about a lifebelt.
*
When I woke on the Monday morning in Alicia’s back bedroom, at first I had no idea where I was. For a moment or two, I even thought I was back home at my mother’s; the narrow room was so cluttered with a medley of indispensable possessions. Through the middle of them, we had cleared a little corridor the night before, for me to get to and from the thin bed. I was a bit dubious about Alicia’s sheets, but I reckoned that even if they hadn’t been washed, it must be a long, long time since someone else had slept in them. In any case, it was such a very warm night that in the end I slept on top of them.
The house was quite quiet and I guessed it was still early. For a while I lay on the bed, sleepily exploring the state of my spirits. To my surprise, I found I was in a thoroughly good mood. I didn’t feel any apprehension or loss as yet, only a somewhat stunned sense of achievement that I had in the end dared to do what I dreamt of. I imagined Rob in Swansea, probably waking up beside Sarah Anderson, and really, I can’t say that I minded.
I supposed Alicia slept late most mornings, since she had no especial reason to do otherwise, and I thought what a nice idea it would be on my first morning to bring her breakfast in bed. After some time, I got up and went downstairs very quietly, so as not to wake her. The sun shone through the stained-glass panels of the front door and made a bright-coloured pattern on the hall floor. With a bit of an effort, I thought, you could really make this place quite liveable in. I looked round the front-room door and saw Alicia was still fast asleep on the sofa, so I tiptoed back and shut it.
Our plates from supper the night before were still on the kitchen table.
‘Once a rotter, always a rotter,’ Alicia had pronounced when I told her my story. ‘You’ll be better off without him, believe you me.’
I did believe her, as I cleared away the salad cream and the wilted lettuce, and started to set out her breakfast things on a painted tray. I thought Alicia had done me the most enormous favour and I was propelled by a wave of sincere gratitude as I carried the tray through the hall to wake her.
I gave a mock-formal tap on the front-room door and I called, ‘Breakfast is served, Madam.’ I listened for Alicia’s answering cackle, but she didn’t reply, so I nudged the door gently open and I went beaming in. I put the tray down on the table and sang out, ‘Wakey, wakey!’ Then I whipped open the thick curtains and I sat down beside her on the sofa. Although her face was pale grey and her mouth was a little way open, it wasn’t until I squeezed her hand ‘hello’ and felt it was cold that I realized she was dead.
So began one of the strangest weeks of my short life. I’m not sure any more how long I sat on the sofa, horrified, having snatched my hand back from Alicia’s cold grasp. All I know is that after too long I thought suddenly that maybe she could still be saved after all and, jumping up in a panic, rushed headlong into the hall and telephoned for an ambulance.
The ambulance crew were very nice to me, but it was clear from their expressions that they had come too late for Alicia. One of them, a chubby man with sideburns, said to me, ‘I know it’s tough to lose your granny,’ and I blurted out, before I had thought what t
he consequences might be, ‘Oh, she wasn’t my grandmother.’ He gave me a faintly irritated look, as though I had thoughtlessly turned down his set sympathetic responses, and thereby caused him extra work. He asked, ‘What was the relationship?’ and when I said feebly that, well, there hadn’t been any really, we were just friends, he sighed a gusty sigh and spoke in an undertone to a colleague of his called Bill.
They all stopped what they were doing then and Bill even sat down on the edge of the dining-table and took his cap off. The man with the sideburns asked me to show him to the phone and when, in my distress, I couldn’t straight away remember where it was, his irritation visibly solidified into suspicion. He made a short officious phone call and then brought the card Alicia always kept by the telephone back into the front room, and checked with me that the doctor’s name written on it was that of her GP. Then he went back to the phone and rang the doctor too.
I couldn’t see the point of summoning the doctor since Alicia was irretrievably dead, and it wasn’t until he and a policeman arrived simultaneously on the doorstep that I understood that she had died in suspicious circumstances and that the suspicious circumstances were largely me.
I suppose it didn’t take that long, the questioning and the signing of the certificate. But by the time it was all over, the greying weary Indian doctor had declared the circumstances no longer suspicious, patted me kindly on the shoulder and hurried on his way, and the ambulance men had left, taking Alicia away under a nearly flat blanket, half the morning had gone by and when I looked at my watch in the daunting silence, I saw it was nearly eleven o’clock. It was only then that I remembered to ring Mr Charles and let him know what had happened to me.
