Her Victory

by Alan Sillitoe

‘Your ex-sailor man,’ Judy said.

  ‘Can’t you call him Tom?’

  ‘Tom, then.’

  She was going to say: it’s nobody’s business. But: ‘I think I do. Yes.’ There was no one else she loved, and if this wasn’t love she thought she would never know what was – but wouldn’t speak of it, hardly aware as to why, except that she felt such a declaration would sadden Judy, or – and the words flashed at her without warning – as if they would imply some kind of disloyalty towards her, a form of gloating, perhaps. She was hot with an embarrassment she couldn’t explain, hoping it would go away before Judy noticed. She was sure she already had. Judy noticed everything.

  ‘Don’t blame you. He is pretty good – for a man. I hope you’re sure, though, because he’s the sort you’ll have to follow. He’s got lots of firm ideas behind that brow of his.’

  Pam was surprised at this opinion. She wouldn’t follow anybody. Or would she? She would if she cared to. If she did it would be out of her free will, and nobody’s business but her own. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He’s the type, isn’t he? Does things, rather than thinks them out. Forceful and secretive, I suppose you’d call it. My husband was the opposite. Nothing but talk. Never did anything till I pushed him into the street. His parents wouldn’t have him back, but he soon found someone to iron his shirts and make his bed. Men always do, even these days. But Tom’s different, I can see that. I once went upstairs for something or other, and through the open door I saw him ironing a shirt. I’d never seen such a thing. A man ironing a shirt! I’d always thought it was impossible. I just stood and looked, till he stopped what he was doing and shut the door in my face. Well, I suppose you’ve got to admire a man who looks after himself in that way. Though I don’t know why. I don’t think it strange when a woman irons her things. You’re certain to be better off with a man like that than with most others.’

  Pam was amazed at how coolly she had analysed him, and how much she admired him. It was unmistakable. A tremor of surprise went through her. ‘Did you ever have an affair with him, then?’

  She could tell lies to a man, though she’d never found it easy, but not to a woman, which she considered to be one of her weaknesses – while having the strength to know that it was one worth cherishing. ‘I wouldn’t call it that. I once kept him company for a night or two between voyages, a couple of years ago. Nothing since, absolutely. I didn’t want to. Nor did he. We stayed good neighbours.’

  Pam knew she could never be a free woman in that way, but was pleased to feel no sense of jealousy. Its effect was rather to make her more affectionate, though a faint diffidence kept her from saying anything at the moment.

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have told you,’ Judy said. ‘But there was really nothing in it.’

  ‘Don’t make it worse! I’m glad it happened to you both. Why shouldn’t we be fond of each other?’ Pam stopped herself going too far, though it would never have occurred to her to say much, being so close to Tom, for it would seem like betraying him. She expressed this to Judy, who said: ‘You’ll have to stop thinking like that. I suppose he wonders the same about you. It’s only natural. No man is a cabbage. Nor any woman, either.’

  They finished the cigarette. ‘How’s your life?’ Pam asked.

  ‘Personal, you mean?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Smashed. My prissy little civil servant girl-friend took umbrage when she saw me with a woman I used to know, and imagined the worst. Or the best, except that there wasn’t any best about it, and the worst didn’t happen, not with her, anyway. But I’m too busy looking after Sam and Hilary to go in for much philandering. We’d better change back into our everyday rags.’

  ‘Oh no, keep yours on. You really do look marvellous.’

  ‘It’s nice to be praised.’ She went to the mirror. ‘I’ll play the drag queen today – but what a let-down when I get home. Do you fall in love easily?’

  Pam sat on the edge of the bed, and felt obliged to say: ‘I sometimes see a man in the street I think I could go for. But I’m attached to Tom, and that’s love, as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t have affairs when I was married, so I feel a bit lost regarding experience, though I don’t really feel a lack of it.’

  Judy sat at her feet. ‘I’ve had quite a bit, but I’m not sure it’s done me much good. I suppose it’s better than not having had any. It’s impossible to have just enough to equip you emotionally for getting the best out of life, but not sufficient to ruin your feelings.’

  In her new dress Pam saw Judy as if she were younger, calm, without children, and able to talk properly instead of swear like a villain, almost as if they had met in some hotel far from their normal lives. It was restful to talk to someone in this inconsequential way, and she wondered if it could happen with any person other than Judy. The distance between them narrowed. She felt far closer to her than when she had been with ‘normally married’ women in the past. With them she would turn stand-offish, especially if the acquaintance threatened to go in the direction of a heart-to-heart talk, as if there was something shameful in their similarly closed lives, much like two prisoners talking in jail and forgetting that a free life existed.

  The narrowing gap generated more intimacy than she seemed to want. A resonance in Judy’s voice was pleasant yet disturbing, at times irresistibly caressing. She looked down on elegantly piled hair, at the flushed face pressed against her thighs. ‘My feelings weren’t finally spoiled,’ Pam said. ‘As soon as I left my old life they began coming back, though it was so painful that I thought once or twice I wouldn’t be able to make it.’

  Judy looked at her. ‘I know. It’s like a diver coming up for air from a long way down, after the air-pipe’s not been working properly. You get the bends. But gradually the agony goes, so I understand.’

  Who but another woman would acknowledge that she had been right to abandon a man? To her, such understanding could only be termed affection, and she laid a hand against the side of Judy’s warm face.

  Judy looked up in pleased surprise. Her larger hand took Pam’s, and she kissed the opening palm, her tongue warming across. They stayed silent for some minutes, then Judy’s long fingers went slowly under her skirt, and though Pam’s face burned like fire she could not turn them back.

  15

  After Tom had put five .22 bullets into the black circle, Hilary wanted a go. The man in charge of the rifle range said that children had to be fourteen, though he would stretch a point if she could get on tiptoes and stand high enough to lean on the counter at least. Tom opened the breech and drew back the bolt so that she could slide the round in. He pulled the butt tightly into her shoulder. ‘Now, squeeze the trigger, here – but gently.’

  The sharp noise of firing startled her. Then she blinked, and pushed her hair back. ‘Did I get the bull’s-eye?’

  He pulled the bolt open, and the empty case came out. ‘Fire the other four, and we’ll see how you did.’

  Sam waited. Each bullet cost five pence, and he trembled at the amount being spent. Hilary fired more quickly. Between the noise Sam heard waves coming through the pier supports and shouldering against the beach. He collected the empty shellcases for trading at school. Money flowed like water into the hands of the attendant, for he and Hilary had thirty shots each before Tom reckoned their smarting shoulders might tell them it was time to leave. But Hilary’s headache came first, and she had to get out. Sam was so pale it seemed he would be sick either from excitement or the peculiar powder-like smell of the airless place. They took their cardboard targets, to compare scores at the end of the pier.

  He watched their zigzag antics on the Dodgem Cars. There was no straightforward life for them or anybody, even though they were looked after to the top of Judy’s ability. He supposed there was intelligence on the father’s side as well, yet they were being brought up as if they would one day have to function like bandits in the hills. They weren’t getting what they deserved. It wasn’t easy to say exactly what they lacked.
A father, most likely, though he found it difficult to believe there was no better solution than that. But it was also true, as he had occasionally found in life, that the most obvious solution was often the only one possible, and in many cases the best.

  He bought them ice-cream with a stick of flaky chocolate. Flickering cold rain made them fasten their duffel coats as they trekked against it to the road, each holding one of Tom’s hands as if they would belong to him for ever.

  16

  Pam closed the door, no click to the latch, unwilling to feel guilty or ashamed. She had forestalled Judy’s pleading. Did I? Was that how it happened? Impossible for her to have initiated it, or to deny such a thing with her, so out of an exquisite regard which was now a vital matter to them, and of no concern to anyone else, she had let her.

  They had their secret, and she was not unhappy. No one could know how much pleasure they had given each other, and as for having a secret from Tom, what love had value which was without a secret to give it depth and solidity? It could not wreck their love, though if he knew, would he consider it a danger? If it had been with a man he no doubt would, and if he didn’t she would be hurt and amazed. She could only hold back those thoughts which threatened to bring shame, guilt, and self-condemnation on every count. She’d had enough of that.

  Surrounded by dresses, skirts, blouses and underwear, Judy slept as if she hadn’t rested for months. Among scattered clothes she seemed dismembered, though her spirit, reflected in her face, was as calm as if set in stone. She needed peace, love, money, or a job she liked, Pam thought, unable to break the gaze at her whose transposition to calmness was more complete than that given by a change of fifty-year-old clothes.

  There was a noise as if a sack of apples had been thrown against the front door. She opened it at the bell, and the children fell in, pink-faced and breathless. ‘We shot bullets,’ Hilary cried. ‘Real bullets from a rifle, Pam. Look at my card: you can see the holes!’

  Tom took off his overcoat. ‘There’s a shooting gallery on the pier. The only thing that would keep them quiet.’

  ‘I’m frozen,’ Hilary said. ‘That rain had needles in it.’

  Pam pulled her close, a smell of wet clothes and soapy scalp. ‘Go in the kitchen then, where it’s warm.’

  But she wouldn’t. ‘I’m starving-hungry, as well.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Sam, to be in competition.

  ‘They’re packed tight with ice-cream,’ Tom told her, ‘so they can wait for dinner.’ He looked: ‘Where’s Judy?’

  ‘She fell asleep. I left her among all the clothes. She certainly looks a picture!’

  ‘She’s always falling asleep,’ Hilary said. ‘She’s got sleepy sickness.’

  Sam held out his arm. ‘Can I look through your binoculars again, Tom?’

  Raindrops flecked the window panes. ‘You won’t see much at the moment.’ He hung them round his neck. ‘Sit on that chair, and tell me if you see a ship coming towards us. Then we’ll take evasive action!’

  ‘I’ll wake Judy.’ She left him opening the wine. Impossible to disturb her. She closed the door and knelt by the bed. There was hardly a breath, only a faint tremor at the breast, and at the closed eyes. She moved to kiss her lips, but held back. She could only go so far, must be met at least half-way before she would dare such sweetness. A kiss would wake her, and Judy would know why. Kisses that didn’t waken were impossible. There might be a reason, if she were seeing her for the last time. And she didn’t want that. Friends in her new life affected her profoundly. Her brain had turned about. She smiled at the difference in consciousness. If Judy were awake a kiss would be easy. Or would it? She had never kissed a woman on the lips before today, at least not when it meant so much. She stroked her forehead, unable to believe such gentleness could be felt through the curtain of Judy’s sleep, the pad of her finger ends going backwards and forwards along the faint lines.

  It was hard to regain control of her feelings so that the experience could be put behind her. She wanted to look back on it, instead of being ever-worried by its implications, which was the only possibility of keeping it as marvellous as she had found it, and the one way she wanted to think about Judy when they faced each other again – without guilt, as the only moments of freedom in her life, if freedom was the time when what you did had not only no connection whatever to the thought within but advanced your consciousness in a direction you never suspected was possible, in such a way as to allow you the choice as to whether or not you wanted to go there at all.

  The idea expanded, and warmed her. She felt a more malleable affection than before, as if she had been inside the moon and was still glowing from its heat, though she assumed that Judy would think nothing of their encounter, and that they would probably not meet in such a way again.

  Her eyes opened. Neither spoke. Judy looked, as if wanting to know where she was before trusting herself to say anything. ‘I haven’t enjoyed it so much for a long time,’ she said.

  Pam nodded.

  ‘I didn’t expect it.’ She held her hand. ‘And so quick!’

  ‘Secret?’

  There was mischief in her glint. ‘Yes, sure.’ She sat up. ‘I slept ten hours in one. You’ve changed back to your own clothes.’

  ‘I know. But keep yours on. You look grand in them.’

  Judy stood. ‘I need a wash. Now I know why you asked me to come down!’

  ‘That wasn’t the reason.’

  She laughed. ‘Have the children been good?’

  ‘Tom says so.’ She watched her fasten her skirt and blouse, then tidy her hair at the mirror. ‘I can’t believe how different you look.’ When Judy kissed her on the lips she stiffened.

  ‘Relax,’ she whispered in her ear. ‘I won’t hurt you. Or eat you!’

  ‘It isn’t that. But we’d better go.’

  She was held firmly by the waist. ‘If you come to London I’ll ask you to stay with me.’

  She would never be there again, she supposed. At least not alone. ‘All right.’

  Sam and Hilary played on the floor with the colour supplements and a packet of felt pens, elaborately vandalizing the advertisements, while Tom read an article in the Sunday paper by a Member of Parliament who began by calling himself a friend of Israel and then went on to consider it right and proper that Israel should surrender its provinces of Judaea and Samaria (and therefore its secure borders) as well as Jerusalem the capital city, as a mark of goodwill to the Arabs, for the sake of international peace, not to mention oil supplies to a Europe which, Tom reflected with disgust, had never been reconciled to the existence of a Jewish State.

  A feature on how to decorate houses seemed genuine because it made fewer demands on credulity and credibility, but he was diverted by someone coming into the room whom for a moment he did not know.

  The sky turned dark outside, and with only wall-lights on, the shadows lengthened Judy’s pale face. Her features were stilled at his gaze. The long skirt and high collar turned her statuesque, made her severe and formidable, an apparition until she spoke. She had stepped from one of his memories, as if an acquaintance of his mother’s or aunt’s had reappeared with a disturbing suddenness that would silence any speech.

  She sensed the unwanted effect, deciding she had been foolish to dress up and that Tom regarded her transformation as either an act of thievery, deception, or cheek. Hilary got up from the floor and ran to fasten her arms around her mother. ‘What’s the matter with you, mummy? What happened?’

  ‘Stop crying, and don’t be so bloody silly.’

  She smiled at Tom, and was again recognizable. Hilary’s octopus grip was hard to break. ‘I hope you don’t mind me having looted your family’s rag-trade heirlooms?’

  ‘I said you could.’

  ‘You look as if I’m back from the dead, though.’

  Such clothes enhanced her beauty. ‘I did wonder, for a moment.’

  The oil-painted face above the mantelshelf seemed to be observing her deliberate pose.
‘Almost feel it myself,’ she said.

  ‘You look splendid.’

  She rested a hand on the piano, a distorted reflection filling the polished top, broken when she turned savagely on Sam for his continued stare. ‘Never seen a woman before?’

  ‘Take them off,’ Hilary whimpered.

  Judy walked over and stroked her daughter’s hair. ‘At least you’re normal. But don’t worry. I’ll be back in my old drag-clouts soon. Then you can feel safe again.’ She turned to Pam. ‘That’s the trouble with kids – you never know what to do for the best!’

  ‘Perhaps if you take to wearing such clothes,’ Tom suggested, ‘you might civilize them.’ Yourself as well – but he wanted peace while they were here, and said nothing.

  ‘I told her how marvellous she looked.’

  Pam wished she had kept silent when Judy scoffed in reply, piqued perhaps because everyone seemed determined to undermine her: ‘You should be the last person to want to straighten me out.’

  Her attack, veiled as it was in her own sort of humour, was noted by Tom, and also by Sam who had turned pale at this apparition in unfamiliar dress. The seriousness of the insinuation was marked by a twitch of alarm on Pam’s lips. Judy relied on her reputation for outlandish remarks in order to evade the responsibility for what she said, whether it had been true or not, but this time she knew she had gone too far, and tried to make amends, a move which to any acute person, which Pam thought meant everyone in the room, could only confirm the truth of what she had implied.

  ‘After all,’ Judy added with a laugh, ‘you said I ought to try something on.’

  ‘I’m glad you took her advice.’ Any words from Tom were better than none, relevant or not, and he spoke only to break the lull following Judy’s assertion which, open to more interpretations than could be fitted in now, was most likely a jocular comment that meant nothing to anyone except herself. Certainly, Pam’s frown vanished as soon as he turned to pour drinks for the three of them.