Her Victory

by Alan Sillitoe

  Behind the city he turned west towards blue sky along the coast. They threaded tunnels and caught vivid sights of the sea. All windows were opened. She felt more carefree now that palm trees and villas were visible, and small villages that looked good to live in.

  ‘There are at least three hotels in town.’ They drove off the motorway. ‘And it’s only four o’clock. Plenty of time for a stroll along the seafront.’

  8

  She sat in the car, and hoped there would be a room. Singlestoreyed cottages were angled between eucalyptus trees and set on different slopes. The larger building had a café and restaurant. People were sitting in shirtsleeves and cotton dresses at outside tables. He tapped on the window, holding a key. ‘Plenty of rooms.’

  He drove around the complicated lane system to their allotted dwelling. There were two beds and a wardrobe, desk, chairs and a telephone, as well as a bathroom. She liked its space and cleanliness. He washed his shirt at the sink, then put his underwear into the water, while she stood under the cool shower, a pleasure all the greater for the change she was going through. Impossible to think about getting back to the place they had left.

  She ran a finger through her pubic hair, and let fingers stroke her belly. She had needed to pull him from death’s cul-de-sac before seeing a way out of her own. In that sense she was connected to him for ever, and he with her, whether or not they stayed as man and wife – whatever that might mean. For who knew whether she would want to remain with him or he with her? To expect comfort from the future was no more than a pathetic cry for help. You could only live in the present, and trust that the way would be shown.

  She soaped herself, and held her face to the downrushing water. With blinds drawn, they lay on their separate beds. When she awoke, two hours had gone. Her oblivion had been without dreams, or any indication of having been asleep except that she felt weak, and hardly rested.

  He sat reading. ‘I couldn’t lose consciousness. The road was still rolling along under my eyelids.’

  She stood by his side. ‘I haven’t looked at the Bible for a long time.’

  ‘I thought I’d bring something to read, for those empty moments when one needs solace. It’s a book that reinforces my moral fibre. There isn’t much left either in me or the rest of the world. It’s on the wane, but we must get it back. My spirit is solidified by this, for instance:

  ‘“Give counsel, execute justice;

  Make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday;

  Hide the outcasts; betray not the fugitive.”

  ‘At one time I would have needed a sledgehammer to get such precepts into my senses. Every word is like bread:

  ‘“And I will rejoice in Jerusalem,

  And joy in my people;

  And the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her,

  Nor the voice of the crying.”’

  What caused her anxiety at hearing him quote such poems? She felt either fear or joy at the change she had seen in him, at the alterations in herself. Nothing in between. There was no anchor, no stillness or fixity for either of them. But they belonged nowhere if not to each other. He was someone come to life whom she had known but had forgotten, yet still did not know who he was. Was that the same with everyone – for the rest of their lives, no matter how long they were together? The mystery that could never be solved was to be the cement of their unity. The insoluble joined them more firmly than the certain or commonplace. He was going away from her, yet would never get so far that they would lose each other, all the same.

  He sat by her on the bed. ‘You looked beautiful when you were sleeping, but even more so now.’

  She put an arm over his shoulder, thinking they would make love. It didn’t matter. She was disembodied, feeling affection more than passion. The air from outside smelled of flowers and pine needles. Their window looked up a hillside. He put on a grey light-weight suit, with shirt and tie, and she wore a cardigan over her dress because the air seemed cool.

  They drank a bottle of Valpolicella before they began the dish of ravioli. ‘I wonder what happened to Aubrey?’

  He broke the powdery bread. ‘Aubrey?’

  She reminded him. ‘Your drinking companion of last night.’

  ‘Seems years ago. I expect he’s in Rome by now.’

  ‘Would you like to be roaming around on your own?’

  Was he, sailor or not, out of his depth and unable to admit that he wanted to end the jaunt? She was elated, then depressed, within a space in which no time passed. Either that, or it went backwards. Her spirit fled. It came back – always. Did he want to turn around, but his mouth wouldn’t say so? To plan travel in the isolation of his aunt’s flat was a pleasant way to pass a few evenings. All experience said so. But how about the reality of being with her? And her reality of being with him? Feeling lost, she knew that he wondered, too, and held his hand. It was getting dark. A few couples were dancing to the music.

  ‘I’ve roamed enough on my own,’ he said. ‘More than thirty years. I love you, and love being with you. There’s no one else, and never will be.’

  He looked at her as if also asking why he was in this place with a plain strange person who was a million miles separated from his worldly mentality. He looked at her, she thought, as if he knew more about her than he was easy with. She saw too close, and too deep, and he couldn’t know it. But was she wondering whether he wanted to go on because she herself couldn’t bear to ask the same question? The idea frightened her. She didn’t want to ask. It was unnecessary because it was unanswerable.

  ‘Tomorrow …’ he began.

  When the music stopped there was the deafening cro-ack of bullfrogs on the hill-slope. Talk, she knew, cured all doubts – and pulverized all queries.

  ‘We’ll go on to San Remo,’ he said. ‘It’s not very far.’

  They needed another bottle for the scaloppine con Marsala. The waiter was young and quick, with wonderful eyes. There was a beautiful man at the next table, with an even more beautiful woman. It was a pleasure to look at other people. She could love them both. ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘There’s nothing else to do,’ Tom said.

  She knew that he was alarmed. So was she. But he hadn’t answered. He might at least reply to her question by asking if she wanted to go on.

  ‘We’ve hardly begun,’ was all he could say.

  He was right in thinking she lacked courage. But she would acquire it by experiene, the only way she knew. It was too late for questions. Who needed them? Questions only occurred to those who found the uncertainties of life too painful to bear. Yet she did, because to let go was to die, especially during changes that seemed incomprehensible.

  He stood up, and she wondered what for. Was he about to leave because he could take no more – dump her – make the excuse that he was going to the lavatory, then walk quickly to the room for his luggage and drive away? Would he join Aubrey in Rome, or find himself a proper woman who would take care of him with no holds barred – as they say? He looked tired, but smiled, a hand at her shoulder. ‘This jungle music’s better to dance to than listen to. Let’s have a try!’

  She looked. He took her astonishment to indicate that she would not be able to act, so held her arm firmly till she got up and followed. They moved around the floor. He was right. The noise wouldn’t let them talk. Unlike the other couples flinging about, they stayed close, her face at his shoulder, his arms around her and hers about him. The dance wouldn’t let them look at each other. It was better this way, more comforting. Nor did he seem to mind. Both were lost in their separation. She liked being close to him yet alone. He kissed her, then stepped away and swung her back and forth, spun himself, and turned her. She laughed, jolted uncomfortably into freedom. You don’t have to care, he said, and it’s called enjoying yourself. She laughed again. The walls of the room ran around her. He was one side, then the other. His face was not part of her, but his body was, as he came near and spun off again. She missed a table by inches, and stepped
back, close to him. She had never danced in her life, and now she had. He was quick, and even her clumsiness vanished.

  He took a torch out of his pocket to light the path back. He liked the way to be plain, his uncertainties resolved. For her to have everything clear in life would be like having no head. She’d left all that behind. She would sit beside him in the car with no head. At the fair as a child there had been a headless woman. She remembered her terror on seeing the lit-up and gaudy poster. She had not dared ascend the wooden steps and see the woman with no head. Lost it in a terrible accident at some factory in Lancashire, a man beside them said. Every fair has a headless woman, her father scoffed. It’s the same one, the other man told him, travelling around. She makes better money, I’ll bet, than she did when she worked in the mill. Does she, though, her father wondered. She gripped his hand, and questioned why it was always a headless woman and never a headless man.

  ‘In tropical places,’ Tom was saying, ‘we didn’t walk anywhere without a torch shining at the ground, because of reptiles.’

  Back at the room she said: ‘I care for you more than I’ve ever cared for anyone. It may not help at the moment to say it, but I want you to know, all the same.’

  He stood in silence.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m such a misery,’ she said. But her soul was her own – sorry or not. In the uncertainty of degradation and homelessness she was herself. He did not attempt to control her by trying to share her despair. She did not need such assistance. He would not do it. He endured her feelings as far as it was possible to do so, but left her free with them, the only attitude which might help to detach her from an agony that would not release her. The nearest he would go to acknowledging her plight was to say, as he undressed: ‘We’d better get some sleep. We’ll both feel better tomorrow.’

  What else could the poor bloke say? Unable to speak, she held him in a strong grip. He moved with her to the bed. She was a long way from anything she had known. He knew she was tormented, but there was nothing he could do. He was not the sort of man to do anything except allow her to endure while not being totally devastated himself. She had to break the ropes of past attachments, and weave new ones with her own unaided strength and will. She was remaking the life of another man, as she had first made the life of George by marrying him and getting him started in business and in life. She had brought up one child and would now bring up another. Was that to be all she would do with herself?

  It was as if she were simply passing the years before starting something real, but by the time she was able to she would be dead. As far as she was concerned there was no other life but this, and she had to do what she wanted while there was still time. She had not come on earth to shoe-horn men out of their suits of armour and bring up their children, even though they would be called her children as well.

  She had to decide – either end it, and do what she wanted, or leave things alone and live like a cabbage. The way was clear, and wide open. Every course was possible, desirable – or out of the question. She was trapped because the breadth of space was boundless. There was no firmer trap than that. She was caught beyond all possibility of movement because all movement was possible and no direction closed to her.

  To leave one man and meet another – where was the sense in that? To abandon one child and have another – wherein lay the difference? To depart from one man she had never loved, to one she believed that she did, was that sufficient? The altered landscape clarified her ideas on the matter. The unknown language around them brought out only what was important. There was no time for dross, no space for former confusions. If she weren’t to die she must know what she wanted.

  Men were more or less taken care of from the womb to the coffin. So were women – if that was what they wanted, but she was herself first and a woman second. She knew that now. He had been a sailor before being a man, but she had never been anything except a woman. The only strength was in being an individual. Even in the world at large – if it mattered to think so – the more individuals there were, instead of married couples, the greater the strength of that society. Double the number of individuals in a society and it would be indestructible. But if so few of them wanted to be individuals she would at any rate be one herself, as far as it was possible to be so. Only in that way could she survive.

  Without any foreplay she pulled him into her, and in a few moments felt him ejaculate. Thus soothed, she fell asleep, only awake long enough to know that he had moved across to his own bed. The next thing she knew she was having vivid dreams and beginning to wake up.

  9

  He bought a box of antico Toscano, gnarled, dark-brown, foul-smelling cigars that nevertheless tasted ambrosial. No other word would fit, he said. He had looked more and more like a schoolboy since she had got the laboratory report that spread his smile beyond all doubt.

  An Italian gentleman at the next coffee table leaned across to say it was customary to cut the antico Toscano into two and smoke half at a time. The tobacconist kept a special pair of scissors for the purpose, he added.

  The palm-lined promenade was in sunlight. Tom preferred to smoke his roots in one long sixteen-centimetre stick, though he had thanked the Italian for his kind advice. They walked under the palms. ‘I mustn’t,’ she said, ‘forget to buy some insect repellent from the chemist, though I suppose if you smoked those all night and sat by my bed they wouldn’t stand much of a chance.’

  ‘I love you,’ he offered. ‘Of course I’ll do it.’

  She believed him, whether said lightly or not. They loved each other, but didn’t know why. How could you know why? Only a fool would want to know. The reasons were obvious if you looked for them. The answers were always there before the questions. But he couldn’t convince her when he said this in all the seriousness of his easygoing manner. Oh how mixed that sailor’s manner was – far more so, it seemed, than when she had first met him.

  He said often that he loved her, like a perfect gentleman who had been used to obeying and getting obedience all his life. But he never said why, and she was ashamed at telling herself that it was not enough. She couldn’t let him know what she wanted, yet couldn’t bear to wait for him to say what she needed to hear. If he couldn’t tell her why he loved her she would rather be told why he hated her than have him say nothing in response to the basic question. She hadn’t gone through the misery of leaving one marriage in order to accept something which was not good enough for her, and, since she loved him so much, was not good enough for him either.

  Yet every gesture and action proved that he certainly did love her, a new experience that was overwhelming, making her the victim of an intoxicating see-saw of emotion which at times she doubted her ability to live through. The intensity of her new life (was it new, and why?) daunted her to such an extent that she couldn’t finally say that she wanted it. There must be something else apart from this – and death.

  He seemed made for the sun, walking by the blue sea and smoking his cigar without any cares, happy with her, adoring her. She had never been adored before. There was nothing she lacked. If anyone had asked if she were happy she would say yes. She was. There was no other answer. They had been here a week, so long that it had become timeless. They never talked about leaving. No question of pushing on. No discussion of what new place to see. Neither joy nor anguish on the merits of staying for ever in one place. Every morning he woke at six and went for a swim. He got out of bed with more alacrity and punctuality while travelling, as if he were still at sea perhaps, and had his duty to perform, than he had when at home and needed to rise by the alarm clock.

  They walked the same route, drank coffee at the same place. But the afternoons were different. ‘Tell me something,’ she said.

  ‘I’m an afternoon man,’ he told her. ‘Having been a morning man all my life, I can now afford to be. My faculties don’t prosper till the afternoon, even though I’m an early riser.’

  She stopped at a stall and bought a postcard for Judy. ‘I miss her.’ She
counted the ships on the sea. ‘Strange as it may seem. There’s a part of me that’s always wanted to be independent like Judy.’

  They walked across the road. Water flickered into grits of white, visibility sharpening on the horizon. ‘You mean that you would like to live alone, as Judy does?’

  ‘I wanted to for years. It seemed the nearest thing to heaven. But I didn’t make the break when the longing was most intense. I got used to the torment, and so couldn’t snap free. I grew resigned.’

  ‘You did it, eventually.’

  ‘In a somnolent kind of way.’ They walked along the shore. ‘But I didn’t make a dramatic exit like Judy.’

  ‘Who knows what her exit was like?’ He laughed. ‘I’m sure no prize was ever offered for the most lacerating departure, though I imagine it was just as difficult and agonizing for you as for Judy.’

  ‘But it took me nearly twenty years.’

  They watched cars driving along the road. ‘And you still want to live alone?’

  ‘I was doing so when we met.’

  He remembered.

  ‘I actually thought I was enjoying it, and maybe I was. But presumably the state didn’t suit me. Do you ever remember the time when you saved my life?’

  ‘I relive it occasionally, hoping you’ll never think I did the wrong thing.’

  She held his hand as they walked. ‘What day is it? I’ve lost count.’