Her Victory

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘I’m happy now,’ she said.

  He held her hand. ‘So am I. But it doesn’t come by pursuing it. Nor by going on strike for more money.’

  She had to agree, though after a while asked: ‘Do you want to go back to the world of your grandfather?’

  ‘Not really. It only led to the one we’ve got now. But I do feel there are values one ought to hold on to. When I wake in the morning I thank God I’m alive. Every birthday I’m grateful for another year of life. I was brought up to believe that if you didn’t work you didn’t deserve to eat. When the sea was calm and empty there was time to mull on things. You were blessed with two minds, one concerned for the safety and progress of the ship, and the other taken over by thoughts of what was going on in the world, but rarely with what turmoil might lie within yourself. It’s very effective to contemplate the state of the world from the bridge of a well-run ship. But things can happen at sea, all the same, and you live with the thought that your life is not your own, being divided between the company you work for and the sea itself. Your life only belongs to you when you set foot ashore. Not even then, for if there’s one thing certain it is that our life doesn’t belong to us alone. Get to thinking that it does, and someone else then assumes he has a right to take it over. Self-assertion comes before slavery. If every man believes in God, or at least has infinite respect for a humane and unassailable system of ethics, then no other man has the moral power to subjugate him.’

  It was more agreeable when he talked than to be caught in the singular deadness that dominated his silence. The evening was pleasant now that the aura of the nurse’s disturbance had gone. But she wondered what was the beginning and end of all he was saying, for didn’t he belong to himself, rather than to something like God? She certainly did, and especially so in the last couple of months when she had moved from a lifetime of torment after having been attached body and much of her soul to somebody else. Even in the most enduring union you had to be your own property first, before any satisfaction was to be got out of allowing part of you to belong to someone else, she told him during dessert.

  ‘Without wanting to seem unduly religious,’ he said, ‘we all belong to the unknown, which I call God. By believing in God we are given the authority for our equality with regard to each other. That’s all I mean.’

  She didn’t like the word ‘equality’. ‘Everyone is different, not equal. If they were equal you wouldn’t have been an officer.’

  He smiled. ‘They may not be equal in everyday life, but they are in the sight of God. It’s vital for everyone to think so, for the proper running of society. Under God and under the law we are equal, and that’s as it should be, otherwise you get the barbarism of dictatorship, as in Russia, where people can’t even leave the damned place until their spirit’s broken, and mostly not even then. Law on its own can be tyrannical, but if you have God then His law, which we must assume to be good and beneficial for humanity, helps to keep human laws civilized. It hasn’t always worked out, but it’s still the only hope we have. And in the best countries it has more or less done so.’

  He was embarrassed. ‘I’m talking too much. Sailors are known for it, once they get ashore, though Jonah talked on board ship till he got himself thrown into the sea, and then talked in the whale’s belly till God got him spouted out again. Not that he was a sailor.’ He tapped the empty bottle. ‘There’s time for another drop.’

  She put her hand on his arm. ‘I’ll get tight if I have any more. Let’s go.’

  He signalled for the bill.

  ‘I’ll pay half,’ she said.

  ‘You bought the food yesterday.’

  She looked astonished. ‘Yesterday?’

  He laughed. ‘Yes – yesterday.’

  He was right.

  ‘We ought not to get too particular about such things.’ He picked up the chit. ‘I shan’t go broke over a few quid.’

  At the seafront he looked up the Pointers to Polaris. There was no more rain. The wind was backing north-easterly. ‘We’re in for a change to dry and cold, so the train drivers will stay snug in their beds with toast and tea, and who can blame them, unless it’s those poor chaps waiting on platforms for non-existent transport?’

  They walked a mile towards Shoreham, then turned back. Lights twinkled in the Channel. ‘Do you wish you were on one?’

  He held her hand. Why did everyone assume so? ‘I see no point in thinking about the past. Life on shore makes my existence out there seem emptiness itself. After what I learned about my family I suppose I’m still the same person who worked his whole life at sea, but the connection feels slender at the moment, walking along the front with you. I expect the two lives will merge sooner or later, but it’s amazing to think I lived so long as someone I wasn’t.’

  ‘Maybe you didn’t,’ she said.

  ‘I agree. It’s hard to be final about it. But if I’d been brought up in that kind of family I imagine I’d have gone to a prep school as a boarder, and then to a public school as a boarder. Being passably bright, and with a bit of luck, I’d have made some sort of university, and become an engineer like Uncle John. By the time I was fifty my mother and Clara would have died, and I’d be where I am now, living in the flat with the money they’d left. On the other hand I might have been an idler, and broken my mother’s heart – or some such thing.’

  ‘I don’t think you would,’ she said. ‘And yet – you might have done!’

  He stood by the rail. Light reflected from behind, as breakers thumped and grated at the shingle. ‘I still think it’s all a dream.’

  She wanted to hold him and kiss him. ‘Is it a bad one, though?’

  Where was the calm impassive sailor she had thought him to be? He looked at her in the half light. ‘While I was in the kitchen this afternoon I remembered an incident from just after the war that I’d not thought of until today. It was the sort of thing that might happen to any sailor in a foreign port. My ship had docked in the East River in New York, and I had a day to spare so walked into town. I got something to eat in a Chinese place, then went up Fifth Avenue towards Central Park. I’d been there before, so knew my way. Passing a Moorish-looking synagogue near 43rd Street I saw a tall old man with a long beard, wearing a black broad-brimmed hat. He was shouting a greeting to somebody behind, as I thought, but he came up to me, and babbled in a language I didn’t know from Adam. He held my hand and called me by a name, and seemed to be asking questions, his eyes glittering with smiles, and I thought what the hell does this silly old bugger want? What’s he trying to tell me? I was young and all stuffy-English, and wanted to push by him and carry on walking, but he was so amiable and familiar that I saw he had taken me for someone else, though it never occurred to me to wonder who it would be. I only wanted to make the most of my day in New York. He realized he’d made a mistake, so waved his hands in the air, almost pushed me out of the way, and walked on. Bumping into someone in a town of millions of people happens all the time, but what I didn’t know then, yet know now, was that that wise old man, even in his understandable error, saw more closely into me than anyone else. And when I suddenly recalled the incident his face was so vivid and close that I could have touched him. I was about to say something, but realized I didn’t know his language. I thought it a pity that we couldn’t understand each other.’

  The recollection calmed him, and they crossed the road to the square. She didn’t want to break into his mind. Each had their privacy, and she was content to guard hers, thinking that her past life would be uninteresting to him. The loss was hers and nobody else’s, and there was no one to blame for it but herself. As soon as you cut yourself off from the people who were responsible for your loss, any thought of blame becomes ridiculous. The twenty years that had slipped by so emptily filled her with rage, and she stood for a moment unable to move for fear of being sick. After a day of such loving, the wasted years became a devastation of centuries.

  ‘We’ve both mis-spent our lives,’ she said when they were
in the flat. She envied his having discovered a whole new landscape of the past, but knew there was no hope of her doing the same – so became glad for him instead.

  He poured a whisky. ‘I suppose nearly everyone thinks so. But they weren’t useless lives. Would you like some?’

  She would make herself a pot of tea before going to bed.

  ‘My life was futile,’ he said, ‘only in so far as you weren’t part of it, but we’ve met now, and I’m able to feel how wonderful it is. It’s bad for my self-esteem to worry about having been unlucky or stupid, or a victim of circumstance. It simply wouldn’t be true, in any case. Life has been good to us in that everything has led to our meeting. We can enjoy it better. It’s more important to think about the future than to worry about having been diminished in any way by the past.’

  The fact that neither seemed to know where they were in their lives united them so effectively that the bond was, she felt, doubly painful. She wondered how much he really knew of himself, in spite of what he had discovered about his family. When he’d had time to absorb the information – for what it was finally worth – would they still have anything in common? She wasn’t able to bring these nagging queries into the open, which worried her because he, without difficulty, said whatever was in his mind. Warped by years of marriage, she felt deficient in not trusting someone she loved. The emptiness surrounding their encounter would indicate, if it persisted, that life was hardly worth living. She ought not to think, but to act instead, and do things. Wasn’t to say better than to think? Twenty null years had robbed her of the ability to say and to do out of her own will when with a man. Yet she had acted this morning because no other course was possible, a daring and positive approach which was not easily undone.

  A lamp illuminated the open book. ‘I’ve found an alphabet which gives the key to this writing, so it won’t be difficult to get the hang of it. I can exercise my brain – like being back at school, but with the lines going from right to left.’

  He was as relaxed as a child with a new toy, as if the imbibing of a different script could change him fundamentally. A spark of mystery gave renewal of life, and put light back into his eyes. ‘It’s like learning a secret language. There’ll be nothing to it when I get a proper start.’

  He closed the book. She found it easy to kiss him. ‘Secret from me? I’ll learn it as well. But it’s time to go to bed, unless you intend studying all night.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  She had disturbed him for no reason, when she should have left him peacefully at his task. He had a future, whereas she could see none, having jettisoned hers by leaving George. With George she’d had a perfect future, of calm and predictable days forming a congealed block of years that would go by until disease or old age carried them off hand in hand. Oh yes, there’d been a fine future there right enough. But she had broken free, and now had none at all, which at the moment she felt was the best kind of future to have.

  Nor did she want any share of that which Tom might see for himself, preferring to live until a future formed for her – or not, as the case might well be – even if the desolation should become unbearable. And really, who had a future? At forty, as Edward once taunted her, ‘you’re over the hill’. Only the young had a future, and then not for very long. After forty the shutters began to come down. The string that held them could wear through and snap any moment, leaving you in the dark for ever. At such an age you were lucky to have any life at all. Every day was a gift, every month a victory, but she didn’t care, as long as she breathed, and had nerves to her fingertips. She had come back to life by crawling through a tunnel, and was more alive than when she had started the process. ‘Don’t go to bed. Stay at your work.’

  He stood. ‘I have all the time I need.’

  ‘Really?’

  He smiled. ‘Life seems as if it’ll go on for ever.’

  She took his kisses. They were meaningless. ‘I don’t need to feel that. I hope you do everything you want to do. If so I’ll feel good knowing there’s at least one person I’m acquainted with whose life is working out according to plan.’

  She was alarmed at his optimism. He was scared by her lack of it. There were dangers that could affect them both. She drew her hand away. He wondered why, but she could not explain.

  ‘We need sleep,’ he said. ‘A bit of the old cure-all of oblivion.’

  No doubt he was right. She felt sickened and weighed down. ‘I’d like to be in a separate bed, if you don’t mind.’

  She fought not to mumble words of apology. Her deepest wish was to be alone. He could stay reading into the night. She found his disappointment unbearable because he knew too well how to conceal it.

  ‘You have the big bed, then,’ he said, ‘and I’ll use my old room.’

  She ached to sleep with him, but it needed too crucial an act to change her mind. It would also break something she did not yet want broken, and extend their intimacy whether he wanted it or not. Things soonest done are never mended.

  She fell asleep after the most wracking agony of tears. She was glad he couldn’t hear. He did. He lay awake, trying to read, steeling himself against going in to give comfort. She wanted to be on her own, so to disturb her would be pure self-indulgence on his part. The muffled noise of sobbing made him realize that he was no longer alone in the world, and never would be again, so he wondered whether that was the reason for the sound being so precious, and the reason why he did not go in to comfort her and put an end to it. His last thought was that whatever the reasons, weeping was a bleeding of the spirit. People needed it. He understood perfectly, because he had never been able to do it.

  5

  She had taken a shower and dressed, and made breakfast. One minute she felt as if the flat was her own home, and the next she seemed like a trespasser waiting for the real owner to come back and say that if she didn’t get out the police would be called. Such an idea made the morning interesting. The weather forecast promised dry, but cold.

  She spread butter on the remaining pieces of bread, and set it with a mug of black coffee on a tray. There’d have to be shopping done, unless they ate out again, which would be more pleasant than staying among boxes spilling papers and dust all over the place.

  He turned from his book as she opened the door. She was convinced he saw a strange woman. He had not even known someone else was in the flat. Distant noises came from underneath. Or she’d been hired to get his breakfast and clean up afterwards. If she had slept in his bed she would have been a slave from an agency with sex thrown in. Better to be mistaken for a servant than a tart. Wouldn’t that be his word? She didn’t care what anybody took her for.

  ‘This is more than I deserve, or expected.’

  She kissed him and passed the coffee. ‘It’s time you got out of bed and faced the day. There’s clearing up to do.’

  ‘There aren’t any trains to catch.’

  When he got up to dress she saw that he wore the golden Star of David found in the box of his mother’s belongings. Hanging at his chest it made him look like a swimmer about to put on his clothes and set off on an arduous dry-land trek. He treasured it like a talisman that would stop bullets or make wounds vanish. But she wanted to hear why he wore it.

  ‘As far as I could gather, it was the only wish my grandmother, and then my mother, had for me. I’m happy to wear it for them – which also means, of course, that I feel a need to wear it for myself.’

  ‘It looks good on you,’ she said. ‘I like it.’ He seemed less starkly conventional, more human. She thought that making love would bring them together before beginning the day, but he got into his pants and vest, then sat on the bed to eat breakfast.

  ‘I intended getting up early, but got lost in what I was doing. It’s part of a sailor’s pride not to turn into the sort of a man who can’t look after himself, though I’ve never known a sailor who said no to being spoiled occasionally.’

  ‘Well, I’ll do my best not to mummy you,’ she said.

&
nbsp; He looked at her, as if the more he knew her the more mysterious she would become. She decided it must be so, because she often looked at him in that way. She didn’t like him ‘weighing her up’ so obviously. She did it to him every moment they were together, which he no doubt found equally objectionable. He must smile inwardly at such times. Yet what did two people do if they weren’t continually judging one another, and trying to find out what the other thought, or forming opinions which they wouldn’t say aloud for fear the other might not like it? The mind raced with words unspoken and unspeakable. More often than not they looked at one another and said nothing, only giving an affectionate smile to signify a truce between their warlike curiosities when they caught each other out but knew they needed to stay friends, which she realized was essential, at any rate for her, while hoping he assumed it was beneficial for him.

  The process of his dressing eliminated her thoughts. He put on a white shirt and did up each button beginning from the bottom. Her observation amused him. For order and neatness he took his time. He opened the wardrobe and brought out a pair of grey trousers, held them in both hands, and bent slightly to draw them on, covering the white scar on his lower leg which, he said, had been caused by a piece of shrapnel.

  She hadn’t seen a man dress for years. George had done so while she lay half asleep, sitting on the edge of the bed to get his trousers over his knees before standing to pull them to his waist.

  Tom fastened his belt. ‘You haven’t told me whether you’re going to give me a hand in sorting out my affairs.’ He pulled his socks on while standing up, then took a pair of brown shoes from under the bed. ‘The offer still stands.’

  He probably polished them the night before. ‘I seem to be doing the job already.’

  He stood at the mirror, and double-knotted his tie. ‘It’s stupid of me to want the matter all wrapped up. Old habits are still dying too damned hard.’