Her Victory

by Alan Sillitoe

  She wants to start an argument, Pam thought, but felt sorry for her. A half-way sympathetic man would certainly make her happier than she is now. He would have to be strong to deal with the children, and willing to allow her a girl-friend now and again. She supposed that if by any chance he existed, the possibility of them meeting was a long way this side of nil. She put an arm over her shoulder. ‘It was nice in Brighton. Perhaps you’ll come down some time.’ She and Tom would pay their fares, and entertain them for the day. They’d lay on food, or go to the beach for a picnic.

  ‘I can’t imagine anybody bothering with a gang like us,’ Judy said wearily. ‘If these two go anywhere nice they take the place apart.’

  ‘Tom will see they don’t.’

  ‘We’ll go out with George,’ Sam said. ‘He promised to take us somewhere.’

  ‘To the Waxworks,’ said Hilary.

  Judy brought the saucepan to the table for second helpings. ‘Don’t bank on it.’

  ‘He gave me a pound note as well.’ Hilary held out her plate. ‘Will he come back soon, mum?’

  Judy banged the pan in the middle of the table, and raged: ‘Be quiet, both of you, or I’ll throw you into the street.’

  Pam recalled how good George could be with children. Edward had adored him, up to the age when he realized that his father was merely living his own childhood again through him. George made it as perfect a childhood as love and money could, but Edward wanted only to be left alone, presumably, Pam thought, because with George anticipating all his desires he found it impossible to know what kind of person he was likely to grow into.

  ‘Well,’ Sam said, ‘he was nice. He gave you twenty pounds, mum. I saw it on the shelf after he left.’

  Judy smacked him across the face, though the blow lacked her usual gusto. ‘I told you to keep your mouth shut about that, didn’t I?’

  ‘I’ll leave home,’ he said, ‘if you do that again.’

  ‘I can’t wait.’

  Pam felt as if she herself had been struck. ‘You mean he slept with you?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter to you, does it?’

  ‘Oh no. Certainly not.’

  ‘He looked as if he was dying with misery,’ Judy said after a while, ‘so I asked him to share our supper. One thing led to another. He was too upset for me to be of much use, but I managed to soothe him in the end, which is probably why he was so generous. He needn’t have been, for all I cared.’

  ‘Twenty’s a lot of money,’ Sam said.

  Pam had nothing to say except: ‘When did he leave?’

  ‘Three days ago. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he came back. Men usually do, before they go away for good. They hate you, but can’t leave you alone.’

  ‘Aren’t all men different?’ Pam asked.

  ‘Yes, they are. But they’re all the same, as well.’

  Pam stood. ‘Burn the letter if you find it. That’s what I’ll do with it, after all.’

  Judy took it out of the drawer. ‘You’d better have the bloody thing.’

  She put the envelope into her handbag. ‘Thank you for holding it.’

  ‘No hard feelings?’ Judy seemed miserable, and it wasn’t necessary in the least, Pam thought, saying: ‘No, none, really,’ though finding it difficult to say anything comforting. ‘We’ll be off tomorrow, or the next day at the latest.’

  ‘Are you sure about going away with Tom?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  She cleared the table. ‘That doesn’t sound very sure. It’s too definite. See me before you go, though. I’ll want a goodbye kiss and a hug.’

  Pam went upstairs thinking how gloomy the place was, but on going into her room felt a tremor of affection for her refuge. She put her bag down and lit the fire, no time between the first hiss and pushing in the match-flame. There was a smell of ice and decaying whitewash. A noise next door caused dread till she remembered who made it. When he put on the radio there was music. The house seemed inhabited and safe. She set a kettle on the stove. Under her happiness was an apprehension that she could not explain. There was no reason, which made it worse. She breathed deeply and became calm, yet the anxiety persisted.

  She took George’s letter from her handbag, and began to read. ‘You are a prostitute, and I’ll get my own back for all you’ve done to me. I hung around waiting to see you, but you had gone off with that bastard, whoever he is. I spotted you, and you wouldn’t look at me, but I’ll get you for it, doing it on me after all I’ve done for you, and looked after you all these years. You don’t know right from wrong, or you went off your head, I don’t know which. Or you just wanted to lead a life that you’d hankered for all your life. Or maybe you’d been doing it before you left, while I was at work. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t, would I? How could I? But I do ask myself why we had to be married twenty years before you show your true colours. I can’t think why, and I wonder if you can. I do know though that if you want to come back you can, and I’ll forget all about what you have done to me. I love you, you know that, and always shall. I always did, didn’t I? I only want to live with you because life’s not worth living without you. I don’t know why, but it isn’t. I haven’t told Ted (Edward) yet that you’ve left me, but I said you had gone to stay for a time in London. So when you come back he’ll never know you’ve been away. I wouldn’t like him to, even though he is nineteen now. He won’t think much of me if he gets to know. So if you come back it’ll be the same as it was, except I’ll take you out more. There’s a new nightclub just opened down town, and we can go there. Business is good at the moment, I don’t know why because it doesn’t seem good everywhere else. I’ve got a new secretary and she’s a real worker and looks after things fine. So how about it? If you give me a ring I’ll be down to fetch you, or you can come up on the train if you like. I don’t mind. You always did as you liked. I can’t wait to see you again. It seems years, but it’s not much more than a couple of months. You’d do well to come back though, I’m telling you, because if you don’t you’ll be leading the sort of life that’ll do you in, because I know you, and when it does don’t come crawling back to me. That’s why I say you’d better come now, because that’d be best, and try to make up for all you’ve done, because if you don’t I’ll give you no peace. I want you back, I know that, and you know it, and if you don’t you ought to, so you have got to come, and if you don’t, me and my brothers will come and give you a good talking to, and you know what that means. And if we see that bloke of yours he won’t be much to look at after we have finished with him. He can’t do what he’s doing to our family and get away with it. He’s playing with fire doing what he’s doing to us, so if you’ve got any sense and don’t want anything to happen to you or him you’ll pack up and get the next train north, and if you’ll phone me beforehand I’ll be at the station in the car to meet you. Believe me, it’ll be the greatest day of my life because I love you and have never loved anybody else, and never shall. So pack up and come back to me, there’s a good girl. I’ll be waiting for you. I’ll never love anybody else. Love. Love. Love. George.’

  The paper shook. Better to have followed her instinct and burned it. She understood why Tom had wanted to do the same with his trash. George would not accept that there was no going back, nor know that she did not live in his world anymore.

  She shivered from cold. His letter paralysed her spirit. Anguish set her trembling because he was part of a trap from which escape was impossible. She had gone from him, but his refusal to realize just how far terrified her. The singlemindedness that had set him up in business was now beamed on her, threatening to pull her back into his tyranny and madness. His hungering drive would last for ever. She didn’t know where to go. She was her own free self, but he would drive her from any safe place.

  She took a carving knife out of the drawer, and ran her finger along the blade too lightly to cut the skin. It would thrust itself into her. She was afraid, and put it back, intending to throw the vile thing away, or give it to Judy with other
belongings that she wouldn’t take with her. She would deal with George without a knife. The shriek of the kettle startled her back to the life she had forgotten. Music on the other side of the wall reminded her. They would start getting their few things together, and be away by tomorrow. She dreaded any unexpected delays.

  She made two cups of tea and took them to his room. He leaned over a sheet of paper, still wearing his overcoat and hat. She wasn’t sure he had heard her. His pen shaped a black curve to join a half-line of dots and angles, symbols fixed as if they had been cut out with scissors and stuck there.

  ‘Keeps me warm,’ he said, ‘coming into a freezing room. It seemed natural to light the stove, draw the curtains, and copy a sentence as if I wanted to send a letter to my mother or my grandmother. Maybe I’m writing to myself. It’s like learning for the first time, straight from the heart.’

  She stood and watched. ‘What does it mean?’

  He read the translation. ‘Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has kept us in life, and has preserved us, and has enabled us to reach this season.’

  ‘Beautiful.’ Her hand was on his shoulder for comfort. ‘We want a new life, and a new way of seeing things – or a new way of looking at the old things that gives them fresh warmth and love.’ She had felt it for as long as she could remember, but had never told herself until now.

  He pushed the papers aside, and returned the pen to his pocket. ‘You’re part of these letters because you persuaded me to search that roomful of stuff, when I really was about to throw it out. You began the process that can’t be reversed, so I never want to be away from you.’

  She kissed his hands. ‘They write such beautiful letters!’

  ‘I saw a page of manuscript on parchment that shines and dazzles,’ he told her, ‘which must have taken weeks to copy. When I was in the orphanage we had to read the Bible every day. For years I didn’t like the sections dealing with a man who was said to have died on a cross for my sins. I couldn’t believe that such an event could have anything to do with me. Somebody had got it all wrong, I thought. My sins are my own, such as they might be, and God will either forgive them or he won’t. But it’s up to God, not the man who was killed by the Romans on a cross – a piece of barbarism of which the twentieth century has more examples than any other. I could believe in God, and those parts of the Bible which weren’t about Jesus. It seemed that God had already had a lot to do with my life, if things had any explanation at all. The so-called Old Testament stories made sense. I had a good memory and learned whole chapters, though I later forgot them. In the navy I hardly opened the Bible, except in some hotel when I might – if I was sober – read a few verses before going to sleep. Later I carried one with me from ship to ship, until somebody walked off with it. It’s strange to realize that much of it was written in the script I’m learning to write, and that one of the books which came from my mother is the first five books of the Bible in Hebrew.’

  ‘They’re part of you,’ she said.

  She sat opposite, did not care to say anything without thinking first. It was no use blurting the words so as to save the anguish of a decision. Those days must surely be over. She must trust herself to say whatever came to her, otherwise there was no way of knowing whether the thought was false or not. She had surfaced after a life under water, and felt the miasma of self-deception clearing. If what she said meant nothing to him, then her words were at least justified by what was in her heart.

  They had seemed more united in his aunt’s flat, together but without that seriousness which, in the cold rooms of this half-way house, pushed them apart. She no longer pertained to herself. Nor did he belong to himself. Neither were they primarily attached to each other. Yet even to think so implied a more than possible unity. They belonged to this world but were detached from it, though only by such feelings of separation could the real connection ultimately be made. It had to start somewhere. ‘I’m in love with you,’ she said simply.

  He couldn’t tell her that he had never heard a woman say so before, but was silent with a silence that was also part of her, just as she thought that her silence must by now belong to him. He shook himself, as if he had been asleep. His eyes showed an exhausted spirit, that seemed to have received an unendurable shock. She had said that she loved him, and he tried to smile, wondering when she would say it again.

  8

  She was in a wood but sunlight flowed between black-and-yellow trunks, smooth and tall with no leaves or branches visible. Her head wouldn’t turn upwards to look. There were bushes and flowers, and gnarled roots half covered with soil that hindered her walk. Sleep showed as if through a window. Her dream, packed on to the head of a pin before it pricked and woke her, kept out the cold. The sunlight was still hot between the trees, and something was about to happen. She stroked one of the trunks, and caressed the mark of its Hebrew letter. Her tongue went forward, and a root at her foot became a cat which nudged her ankle and leapt up the tree before she could touch. She walked a straight line between trees till sunlight drew off, and darkness came. A muffled bang sounded far away as she was climbing, an easy ascent to follow the light, going towards the inside of an umbrella that had a hole where the centre should have been, floating weightlessly up the inner funnel of a parachute without any thought for the earth, arms and fingers straight above her head so that she could steer through and into a light that would last for ever.

  A noise deepened into thunder and tore her eyes open. A mass from the outside world threw itself at her. She sat up. Light came through curtain slits.

  ‘Open the fucking door.’

  She hurriedly put on shirt and slacks, buttoning and zipping. Her fingers wouldn’t work. She felt sick, and choked back her dread. ‘Go away.’

  A piece of paper had been pushed in as if it might save her life. She snatched at it. ‘Gone out for a while.’ George must have watched him leave.

  ‘Let me in, you whore.’

  ‘I’ll see you downstairs, at Judy’s.’ I won’t see you. Keep out of my life. I’m finished with you. She shouted, but he banged at the panels, then ran at the door with his broad shoulders, shot latch, lock and bolt apart, and was in the room.

  She would not let him see her terror. ‘I told you: I’d meet you downstairs.’

  He had grown stouter, as if in the habit of boozing heavily. He trembled as he leaned against the doorway. ‘Pack your things. I’ve got the car outside.’

  Say something, but don’t argue. And say it quietly. He was strong and agile, but his skin was blotched. He was grieved, and full of violence. ‘I’ve only just got out of bed. You woke me up. If you’d let me know you were coming we could have met somewhere and talked things over properly.’

  The clock said nine. He had set out in darkness, full of energy and purpose, see-sawed with love and loathing, till loathing got the upper hand, as it always did. His eyes had hardened during the long stare of a hundred and forty miles of road, impacted by tar and dazzling light thrown back.

  ‘Pack your stuff. We’ll talk in the car.’ He looked around the room. ‘It wain’t take long.’

  She stood with hands together to stop them shaking. The only way to evade him was to die, or pray for his instant obliteration. She remembered that for the first time in her life there was something to live for.

  He moved closer. ‘I ain’t got much time. The lads came down with me. We’re to be back at work today. There’s no time to waste.’ His fist banged down and tipped her clock, as if angry that she looked at it and not him. His previously contained insanity was erupting. There was no one else in the world but himself, and the person that he wanted to control – which is me, she thought. No will or object could stand in his way, certainly not an instrument for the marking of time.

  In such a way he had been insane since she first met him, and she must have known it, and been ensnared because his maniacal sense of possession had left her with no possibility of refusing whatever he wanted. Her presence during thei
r marriage had kept him on the proper side of normal life. And if much of the time she had seemed out of her mind herself, it was only because she was taking the madness from him so that he could function properly. She would have no more of that.

  He pulled at her. ‘You will get in the car, if I have to kick you in.’

  She looked around.

  ‘He won’t help you.’

  He had been drinking, kept a bottle in the glove-box. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Alf, Harry and Bert are waiting downstairs for that git. Our family stands together, you should know that. Twenty quid each, and extra for petrol. A good day’s pay, but they stick by me, all the same.’

  To pack was easy, and then to unpack. ‘Let go of my arm.’ He had worked out his plan, so there was no one to help. ‘I don’t want to come with you.’

  ‘You will, though, let me tell you.’

  She opened the drawer. One thrust, and she was up for murder. No one would believe her. He attacked me. Where are your marks? ‘And what are you going to do when we get to Nottingham? Do you have a room with bars at the window?’

  ‘Ah, no, duck.’ His mood altered. ‘Once you’re back home, and you see how nice it is, you’ll be your old self again. It’s warm and clean up there, not like this freezing pigsty. You’ll be as right as rain.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had breakfast yet,’ she said.

  He sat down, resting on his knees, looking more alone than he could have thought it possible to be. ‘We was up at four. I’ve given them two days pay – double time – and a bonus after we’ve got you back home. This little lot’s costing me nearly two hundred. So just get packing, or I’ll block your throat with your teeth.’

  ‘It’s a lot of money,’ she said, ‘just to get me home.’

  His brothers had fed him the filth. ‘It ain’t right for her to do it on you like this, George, after all you’ve done for her. I’ll bet she’s having a real old carry-on down in London. God knows what she’s up to, but she’s finding plenty to keep her busy. A woman can allus find a man down there when she wants to. Thinks she can get a lot more from him than she can get from her husband. I expect she can, as well. You was never one for giving her a lot of that, was you, George? Too busy at your factory, though we can’t blame you for that. I suppose she even cracks jokes about you to her new bloke. Wouldn’t be surprised, I wouldn’t. If I was you I’d go down and give her a bloody good pasting. Bring her to her senses. Get her back home for a dose of you-know-what. That’s all they want. If Mavis played the same stunt on me I’d give her such a smack in the chops she wouldn’t wake up for a week. She’d be as right as rain, then. That’s what you ought to do with your Pam. Do you both a lot of good. We’ll help you to find her and get her back, wain’t we, lads? Mind you, we’ve got a few jobs on at the moment and time’s money, ain’t it, George? You’re allus saying so, but we know you’ll make it right with us if we give you a hand. After all, brothers have to stand by one another.’