Her Victory

by Alan Sillitoe

  She sipped her bitter coffee, thinking how lucky he was to be able to talk so easily.

  ‘There are other ways than by drugs.’

  Perhaps he spoke like that because he’d spent years talking to himself. ‘I’m sure.’

  He lit his pipe. ‘I know so. I’ve tried a few. But often the sea drained every possibility of personal speculation, except that concerning the existence of God. I don’t feel embarrassed saying that, because it’s a question which on still waters has no answer, and seems all too obvious during storms. One watch follows another, and such speculations soon lose any relevance they had on taking departure. Days drift by. A storm is one day, however long it goes on, and a calm sea likewise. Every minute is occupied by a routine of vigilance, even if it only means staring at a plate-glass ocean. Life is a drill, slow-motion sometimes, often too hectic for good health, but at least you don’t forget anything, or let yourself in for too many systematic, constant, random or probable errors, or fall into a dreadful blunder on getting too near land that sends you to the bottom like concrete. But on shore everything’s different, a matter of learning to live so that you don’t seem like a ghost to everybody as you walk the streets, and so that you don’t feel one to yourself. I don’t need shock or drugs to get me to a new state of being, as I read in the colour-supplement magazines that people often do. I have to get accustomed to normal land-locked life, and it’s like being born again, which I suppose is enough of a shock.’

  Her face was encased in her long slim hands. She had not replaced her wedding ring. He was talking for a purpose. She wanted him to continue.

  ‘I was going to ask,’ he said, ‘if you’ve got time to spare, whether you’d like to travel down to Brighton with me. I like to look at the sea now and again, that cemetery of old friends, not to mention myself.’

  He was surprised not to feel embarrassment at such disembowelling of the spirit. Sailors’ tales with mates or girlfriends had been different, and reflections like these had been kept secret in either fair or foul weather. ‘You can go your own way in Brighton, or come to the flat and I’ll show you around the old place. It’ll be a change for you, and a pleasure for me to have company.’

  She wanted to say yes. His offer was too important to refuse, being the only one she’d had. Can I let you know later? I’m not sure how I feel. She didn’t speak, but vaguely nodded. To judge by his smile she had accepted. She was too exhausted not to. She needed freedom and ease, to sleep, but not to die any more because she wanted to know who he was. Coloured sparks were spinning in the space where her thoughts were losing themselves. No one had graced her with this kind of talk before.

  6

  In the dark, at five in the afternoon, she put on the light and got out of bed. Endless time was before her, but why didn’t her thoughts stop racing? She drew the curtains, and dressed. The room was cold, so she lit the gas. She listened for movement from next door. He had gone out. She pressed three teabags in boiling water to make a strong drink.

  Every move is deeper into a prison when you are on your own. There is no place more secure than that of yourself, which those who are alone go further into at every step. She knew it, but was unable to make amends.

  The rain had stopped, but it was cold and raw. She passed a lit-up police station and turned towards the Underground. The rush hour was coming out, pushing up the steps. Traffic was stalled at the lights. An old man clutching a plastic bag searched a dustbin.

  She got rid of some tenpenny pieces in the ticket machine. Few people went down, but the up-escalator was packed. She wanted to walk in lighted places. She craved to be in the dark, on her own. She needed both conditions, and was glad to be alive.

  She liked being wherever she was. A train came quickly. Stops flashed by. She missed Oxford Circus, got out at Tottenham Court Road, followed crowds into the fume-laden air, looked at faces behind the glass of Wimpys, Hamburgers, Golden Eggs and Grills.

  The window of a sex shop was veiled. She saw books, tapes, films, vibrators, condoms, flimsy underwear that probably melted when you washed it, rubber suits and rubber dollies that perished after whatever was done to them, and contraptions whose uses she didn’t try to fathom. The men and few women had perhaps come in out of curiosity like her. There were young people, and the smart middle-aged with brief-cases. Film shows took place behind a curtain. Relaxed and unconcerned, people inspected goods on offer, read labels and sets of instructions, and bored young women at the cash desk checked items out like food at a supermarket.

  A man gripped her elbow. ‘Will you come with me?’

  She snapped her arm clear. There was no fuss. Would she have gone with him if it had been Tom? The answer was no, but he wouldn’t have done such a thing. But if he did? Don’t think. Don’t think.

  She looked along more shelves and tables of the sexual-fun market that promised the unattainable. A tourist or passer-by was born every minute to fall for such unkept promises, moneyed customers who bought some mechanical spirit-killer to use in making love, goods to be put in Christmas stockings or to litter desert tents. Love is the last thing it can be called.

  The district was a garish beast glutted on all that was false. People come to London and go home clutching some sexual gewgaw as they had once taken a stick of rock and a funny hat from the seaside. Whether they walked out with something in their mac pockets, or stuffed into pigskin briefcases, they had more money than was needed for life’s necessities. Goods had to be provided in exchange for floating cash, for they couldn’t be expected to throw their money into the gutter or keep it in the bank, though she supposed that most of the stuff ended in dustbins that tramps rummaged through looking for something to keep them alive.

  Old Compton Street smelled of coffee, oranges and exhaust fumes. People were going to theatres and cinemas. Dirty-book shops flourished. Strip shows did good trade. She had to walk along the roadway because some cars blocked the pavement. Cafés and restaurants were full. Those who lived on their own must feel better at seeing how many others also lived alone. Life went on, which was no doubt an improvement on no life at all.

  George, wearing a hat, and his heavy olive-drab rainproof overcoat belted at the waist, looked at a showcase of illuminated photographs. A hand at the side of his face indicated that he was about to go into the cabaret place. The man at the door was cajoling, and George said something inaudible, changing his mind, jerking his head aggressively to make the words plainer. He walked along the street, away from her. The man in the doorway swore after him. When George looked back he still didn’t see her. Misery had made him fatter, and made her thin. In bed together, their combined weight would no doubt be the same as before.

  He turned the corner into an alley. The right angle of the wall seemed as if to fold over her, but she waited, and hoped it wouldn’t, her fingers opening on the brick surface. A woman looked as if she would kill her, then moved on, swaying a handbag like a piece of plate-glass.

  She changed her track for Piccadilly Circus. She could have said: ‘Take me home. Let’s go, for God’s sake, and get it over with.’ But she hadn’t. The sight of him confirmed the pointless existence she had given up for good. Fear that he might have seen her made life in her room seem like a blissful prison in which she could hide when necessary.

  Shaftesbury Avenue concealed her. She pushed, and made headway. Four jet engines whined in from a place Tom had no doubt been to. A man in overcoat and cap had the same predatory jaw and fixed grey eyes as Bert. She stepped aside without reducing her pace. She expected him to reach out but, his mouth set in cunning, he pretended not to see her. The banging of machines and the dull jingle of coinage came from an amusement arcade as big as a garage. Perhaps Alf and Harry were among the flash of coloured lights, having sponged George’s small change.

  She walked in the road to avoid a cinema crowd. When a taxi horn blared she jumped back. Popcorn sellers and hot-dog vendors shivered in the drizzle. Wastepaper clung to the feet as if it were magnetized. She
knew the streets better than George and his brothers. The four of them must be out on a spree, or as a last effort to help George find her before giving her up for ever. Women with figures contorted beyond all credulity showed up in vivid lighting. Men came out, and men went in. She walked quickly from juke-box noise and traffic, and people ceaselessly on the alert for something they would surely never find. She wasn’t one of them, because what she wanted did not exist where people could never meet or understand each other no matter how many times they gyrated. The area to her was an artificial flower, blazing with light, and rotten to the middle of the earth. The only certain road from it was to cut a straight line for as far as she could go.

  Her mind had never been so clear nor her eyes so sharply focused. She had seen George and his brothers, and it was necessary to flee. A young man with flowing auburn hair and a rucksack held high in one hand, ran through traffic to the Eros statue. A girl followed, her laughter screaming above the noise of motor cars. Pam pushed against the tide of people coming from deep under earth, holding the rail as she descended the steps with such determination that a way was made for her.

  Her last tenpenny coins went into the machine. Yes, I’ll go to Brighton with you, she would say, and if he’d changed his mind she would take a trip on her own. As unobtrusive stalkers there were none better than George and his brothers, therefore she got on the Piccadilly Line so as to change to the Circle Line at South Kensington and do a devious if not zigzag walk from Bayswater. In spite of such crowds in Soho George’s brothers may have kept her in sight, she being one against four. Yet knowing the system, where she assumed they did not, decreased their advantage. She was a free person, but if they found her lair she would get no peace.

  Instead of South Kensington she went to Earls Court and then changed north as far as Edgware Road, when she crossed platforms and came back to Notting Hill Gate, switching on to the Central Line for Holland Park.

  She had lost them, if indeed they had lasted beyond the first interchange. But she couldn’t be sure – feeling that she had been followed up Ladbroke Grove. In any case it was time to abandon London, look for work in a place with better air, where George and his tracker-dog brothers would never think to hound her down. She would buy a map, but would it be of England or of the world?

  7

  George sat in his car, looking up at her room. She walked by with Tom. George stared, and rolled the window down as if to speak. He didn’t. She was with a person unknown to him. His round face under the usual trilby hat pleaded with her, but she had severed contact, and wondered why he couldn’t leave her be. Her life was her own, and he didn’t yet know it. When her fear came back she regretted not tackling him, but with every step it was less possible. To delay such a matter would build up a dangerous mood in him, a process she knew well. The day was ruined before it had begun.

  Tom waved a taxi in Ladbroke Grove, and put down the small seat to face her. He wore a cap, a brown suit with waistcoat and watch-chain, well-polished shoes, and an overcoat. His leather briefcase was of the kind used for carrying sheet-music. He was freshly shaved and smelled of soap.

  She wondered who had taught him to dress, supposing it had been necessary, or who had influenced his choice. Perhaps girl-friends had put him right on harmony and colours, just as she had tried to smarten George by persuading him to get at least one suit made at the best tailors but who, when he had, was too shocked to wear it because of the cost. In the matter of ties, socks, shirts and shoes he had no matching sense at all.

  Neither had she, on occasion. If she felt happy, she could achieve a plain sort of smartness with what she had in drawers or wardrobe, but there were also times when a clash of styles showed her unsettled state of mind to the most casual eye on the street. The only way to avoid this was by devising simple permutations at more confident moments – clothes she could put on without thought. But no matter what her mood, she’d always had a sense of judgement regarding George’s appearance. While he resented her criticisms, he was careful to act on them, though his training had lapsed, to judge by the odd tie and pullover he had been wearing in the car.

  She would forget him, if she could, for today at least, feeling smart and comfortable in her grey skirt, white blouse, heavy cardigan and walking shoes. There was nothing of fashion, but she didn’t care for that. Her coat was longer than it should be, but in such weather it seemed an advantage. A headscarf and woolly hat in her bag would help if it got any colder. She wondered that young girls in London didn’t perish considering how little some of them wore.

  Tom looked out at the overcast sky. The park was dull under its pall of winter. A piece of paper scooted along the pavement when the taxi paused at a crossing. ‘Should be clearer on the coast,’ he said briskly. ‘Still changeable, though. You might need that umbrella.’

  He then fell silent, but she didn’t feel threatened, didn’t have to talk in order to defend herself, or attack him before he sent verbal shot at her. Such thoughts ruffled her ease, but she fought to stay calm. When the taxi came into the station forecourt he slammed up the seat so as to get out first and hold the door open.

  He bought single tickets on the assumption that no one could say when they would be coming back. Pam waited by the bookstall, looking over the paperbacks. He had no expectations, no plan except to sort out the family junk, no sense except that of happiness at not going to the flat alone. He looked at the departure boards. ‘The fast one leaves in half a minute.’

  ‘Let’s run!’ She took his hand and pulled him along.

  A naval man never runs. Run, and you fall. You can’t see what you are doing. You injure yourself, or send others flying. Such accidents might prejudice the safety of the ship. So never run.

  But he ran now, cutting through queues and dodging trolleys. The black man at the gate said: ‘You’ll be lucky, mate.’

  The train was moving, and he helped her in.

  Clouds flowed, and blue gaps appeared after Croydon. He had forgotten to buy a newspaper, he said. ‘Shouldn’t have run,’ she taunted him with a laugh.

  ‘Often I didn’t see one for months. Didn’t much hear the wireless, either, though the Sparks kept us informed. With a good wireless operator you never lacked news. Even in sleep they’re glued to the set searching the ether! When I came across a newspaper again it seemed as if nothing had happened.’

  They wanted breakfast. ‘I’m ravenous,’ he said to the waiter. ‘Bring everything for both of us.’

  There was countryside to look at beyond Gatwick. She remembered the waiter in the train from Nottingham, tall and handsome, long since gone.

  He held his knife and fork almost at the top of the handles, which gave him a fastidiousness that hardly matched his face. Why had he asked her? Out of kindness, she supposed. It was good to be on a train while you looked at the fields floating by. The world was another place. The worst was outside, and changed with surprising ease. ‘Marvellous,’ she exclaimed, telegraph wires lifting and falling.

  He felt like a youth of twenty because she had agreed to come with him, a competent person who, in spite of her gesture of despair, should have known better than to bother. She was abstracted, as if controlled by a mystery he would never be able to unravel. He was happy. Things rarely worked in conjunction, but today they had. His image in the window-glass was that of a worn and battered man of the world who had experienced too few of its many parts.

  There was something untouchable about her spirit. He knew little except that she had been married, and had a son, and had broken the connection, an act which, judging by her sensitive but rawly outlined features, had needed much strength of purpose. She was emerging from the hardship, and he wondered how she had done it, but his need to know could not matter, because such a person never voluntarily explained herself. She seemed to live on an island, surrounded by reefs and sandbanks, that no one else would be allowed to explore. It wasn’t important now that she was with him, and he knew himself well enough to realize how inaccurat
e his impressions might be. He felt as if the weight of his own meaningless life was being taken off his back.

  They walked from the station, streets freshened by cold wind. They told each other it was good to walk. Gulls squawked over the roofs, and he wondered how he had lived even for a few days without their sound. He had to get used to not hearing that mocking cry of freedom. In every place he had been the noise had an edge of malice, the over-zealous mimicking of the free calling to the unfree when in fact their sounds were signals to each other and had nothing to do with him. Yet he loved their cries, as if he’d once had the voice-mechanism for making them himself but had at some time been struck dumb.

  The noise of the gulls over the seafront was less piercing, their calls were poignant, however, because he was with someone who made him feel unimportant but happy. He saw breakers rolling up the shingle and battering the walls, the tide rushing in like flocks of swans trying to escape destruction. Each wave seemed dead-set for himself, and he wanted a rest from such never-ending force. The sight of their unwearying remorselessness exhausted him.

  It was hard to believe he had tolerated the sea-going life for so long – now that he had given it up. But everyone had to earn a living, and he had taken the way of least resistance after looking out of Clara’s window and deciding that on the sea he would find both vocation and a living. He was young and, much to Clara’s relief, who wouldn’t otherwise have known what to do with him, had asked no questions. From an orphanage on to a ship hadn’t been much of a big step, and once he had paraded his decision, youthful stubbornness turned it into an obsession.

  Few choices had been possible, but when looked back on they formed obvious landmarks whose positions never varied from the place in which the years of life had set them. The big changes of choosing the sea, and leaving the sea, had left him feeling sufficiently elated to want as many more variations as there would be time for in his life, though to consider probabilities would ruin the clarity of the first choice that came along. Perhaps it had already been made, and only lacked recognition, and a gentle altering of course by a few points. At his age such changes could be made with less disturbance than before because they tended to stay more concealed.