Her Victory

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘Friday, according to my almanac.’

  ‘I didn’t want to live alone.’ She added after a pause: ‘What surer proof could you want?’

  ‘It’s not only me you’re living with,’ he said, stopping to relight his cigar by cupping the end in his hand against the wind.

  She stopped, and looked at him. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s not only you I’m living with, is it? It’s your past, your ideas, and all the different people in thousands of years who have gone to producing you. It’s your nationality, religion, dreams, battles, great migrations – if there were any; struggles and miseries, all the human permutations of every kind of change, which there obviously were; the strife and jubilations, which I hope there were. You wanted to escape, but I pulled you back into them. I shan’t remind you of that again. I never intended to, but it still seems to be what we’re talking about. I belong to you and your millions of bits and pieces for as long as you’ll allow me to. I’m part of them, just as you are a part of mine, and you know as much about my past as I do myself, because we went through that heap of intimidating evidence in the flat, and I told you everything bit by bit as it came to light. So neither of us can live apart from each other. Even if we went away this minute and never met again we wouldn’t really separate. By living together, we are interdependent, yet still independent, in a peculiar sort of way. I see you as more truly liberated than Judy, more courageous. You’ve been through a great deal more, and I know you are still going through it – though I’m not diminishing her suffering, either.’

  She saw his face, the same she had glimpsed while driving and thought so empty. Did he teem with speculations every minute of the day? It was the same face she had woken up to after killing herself. She was amazed, yet glad to hear him talk, for how else could she know what was in his mind if, as was generally the case, she was too craven to question him directly, or too indifferent to want to know anything.’

  She walked on in order to maintain her smile of equanimity, for she was exhausted by uncertainty and self-distrust. He saw more in her than there was, she thought, something he wanted to perceive but which did not exist. He was doing his best in every way. Or maybe it did not exist – whatever it was – because she did not wish it to. Who was he to say that it did, or she to say that it did not? – this mysterious quality she could not get hold of. She didn’t want to disappoint him by denigrating herself, though it was hard not to. But if all that he mentioned was a reality then it was something she herself could neither see nor feel, and therefore if it was present to him and not to her there was an imbalance in their association which, however she tried to correct it, would be the end of her independence for ever. He spoke in this way because he wanted something from her which she did not know existed, and which she might not want to give even if it turned out to be there and she eventually discovered what it was.

  He also wanted to give something to her. That was certain. He already had, but she found it harder to receive than to give, and was terrified at becoming enmeshed by it. But perhaps it had already happened, and if so, there was no cause to be afraid. She had abandoned everything, but was there nothing else to be done but go on with him?

  In the old town there was a market selling an abundance of vegetables and fruits, as well as olives, spicy sausage, cheeses and bread. He bought a bag full, did the buying, chaffing at the women as if he spoke their language perfectly and not just a few phrases which, she had to admit, he mimicked pretty well. They loved him, she saw. He flirted and they flirted. It was their way. And they smiled as if they loved her as well. She bought a melon while his back was turned, and the woman who handed it to her knew she was pregnant.

  They drove along the coast to where it wasn’t too crowded.

  ‘I thought sailors couldn’t swim,’ she said, taking her clothes off.

  ‘It’s not that they can’t. It’s often that it does them no good when they have to try.’

  She had a horror of treading on something she couldn’t see. He drew her along, and out. ‘Can you swim?’

  ‘After a fashion.’ She dived forward, feeling a wave of water as he followed. He swam around her, then she broke out of his circle and went ahead in a rapid side-paddle, turning to see how far off she had left him. She felt safer when she could no longer touch bottom, dipped under and corkscrewed up for air, spouting water at the sun’s heat. She laughed at his slow progress, and did a languid breast stroke towards him.

  They sat on a slab of rock in their swimming suits, a towel over her shoulders so as not to scorch. ‘I’m getting dehydrated,’ she said.

  He went to the car on the road and came down with the stove, provisions and a canister of water. Ships in the distance stood waiting to go into harbour. She couldn’t eat in the early morning, but her appetite came as the day wore on. Sea creamed over the rocks, a ragged string of phosphorescence coming in and going out.

  ‘It’s polluted,’ she said. ‘We’ll probably die after our swim.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. But if it is we’ll have to get used to it.’ He made tea, then sat and looked at the ships through his binoculars. She couldn’t tell when they moved, but didn’t doubt that he could. They were monuments to the patient sailors who worked on them. Graven, and unable to move head, arms or shoulders, he was a statue set above the dreamy sea. She was apart, and let him be alone, not wanting to know what he thought. He was filled with his own back-and-forth contemplation. When he lowered the binoculars his eyes continued to look in a half squint towards the horizon as if he could see beyond the dark blue line.

  She wanted less and less to know what kind of vision he saw. His vision was part of him. His, and his alone. He had a right to it. What did she want it for? She had her own, however unclear it yet was and would perhaps remain. But her own. That was what she wanted. If she showed interest in his she might not understand what he would say, might not recognize her own when it became manifest, if one day it magically did. So how could she take a chance on such a vital question, which in any case wasn’t specifically hers? Perhaps at the moment he had even less to tell than she had, that he was also empty, and content in spite of all.

  The sun warmed her thighs. She lay back, her head on the folded basket, lids closed against the sky’s glare, smelling trees and a mild breeze from the sea. She weighed nothing – because of the heat, the touch of grit under the calves of her legs, her closed eyes and the sense of emptiness given by sea and sky. The vacancy of space produced a peace no force could touch. Her senses floated. She could broach all limits. Within her weakness she felt a semblance of not quite forgotten strength returning from many years ago. Or perhaps she was recalling a life she had never known, a reflection sent back from the future telling of what was yet to come, but designed only to lure her into unimaginable turmoil.

  Such feelings of renewal were impossible to trust. She preferred to push them away into the fanciful mists, and instead enjoy the timeless moment with a hand over her eyes to keep off the sun’s damaging glare, yet be ready for whatever might come.

  He looked at the sea, and said that for the first time in his life he did not want to move. He wanted to stay where he was for ever. The great blue had meaning only because she had come with him. She was here. Why go on? Tennyson had a few choice words on the subject, he laughed. What did it matter where he lived? His ancestors could look after themselves.

  He turned to her. ‘I’ve lived three whole lives: orphan, seaman, and now I’m a Wandering Jew. The last I didn’t know about till recently, which makes it more important than the others, because it really was the first. It means everything – and yet nothing, as long as I’m with you.’

  God had already taken care of them, he went on, just as they would yet be taken care of. He felt weary to a depth he could never have imagined, though knew he had no option but to move, as if he had a fatal illness and was determined to die only in a particular and chosen spot of the earth, so that he could be content in knowing tha
t he had done the right thing even unto death. He refused to believe it, however. It wasn’t like that at all. They still had a whole life to live.

  They collected the things together and put on their clothes. She should have been afraid but wasn’t. When he revealed himself so absolutely her optimism came back, the unalloyed and joyous sort with no catches to it. Yet it didn’t last long, though the residue left her with the desire to do something, to move, to act. When they were driving along she said: ‘I want to go back to England.’

  ‘All right,’ he answered. ‘We’ll light off in the morning.’

  ‘Not in the morning. Now.’

  He would obey. He has obeyed all his life, she thought.

  ‘We’d better let Judy know, then,’ he told her.

  ‘Send a telegram.’

  ‘Why not phone?’ he suggested. ‘Do it from the hotel while I pack.’

  10

  ‘Judy?’

  ‘It isn’t Judy.’

  ‘Who is it, then?’

  ‘It’s Hilary.’

  She hadn’t recognized the voice. It had sounded like that of a boy she didn’t know. ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Is your mother there?’

  ‘No, but Judy is.’

  Now she knew what she was going back to. ‘Get her for me,’ she said sharply, ‘or my fist will come out of the telephone and clout you one! I want to talk to her.’

  There was a bang, as if the phone had dropped on to the floor, or had been thrown there. She waited.

  ‘We’ll only get two hours along the road before we have to stop and look for another hotel,’ Tom said, folding his trousers into a case. ‘We might as well stay here tonight – we’ll have to pay for the room, anyway.’

  She could tell he thought her more stupid than determined.

  ‘Start early tomorrow,’ he went on. ‘We’ll be half-way up the Rhône before evening, maybe even beyond Lyon.’

  She nodded. ‘I want to go now.’

  ‘Judy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Pam.’

  ‘Pam?’

  ‘Pam.’

  ‘Pam! Where are you, then?’

  ‘Italy.’

  ‘You sound next door.’

  ‘So do you.’

  ‘I wish I was.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be nice? We will be, soon.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep for days after you left. What do you mean? Are you coming back?’

  While with Tom she felt ten years younger. With Judy she felt that even twenty years had been taken off her life. ‘I’ve got news for you. I’m pregnant.’

  There was a drop in the tone of her voice. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Tom’s happy, as you can imagine.’

  ‘I’ll bet he is.’

  ‘I am as well. I hoped you would be.’

  Judy forced a laugh. ‘That’ll make three kids we’ve got.’

  ‘I don’t expect there’ll be any more, though, do you?’

  ‘Let’s hope not. Boy or girl?’

  ‘I can’t tell yet.’

  ‘Let me know as soon as you can.’

  ‘I’ll try!’

  ‘I’m interested. See you in a few days, then.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Do you want us to move out?’ Judy said.

  ‘For God’s sake!’

  ‘Well, do you?’

  ‘What an idea!’

  ‘We’ll make very picturesque refugees, sitting on the steps of the town hall. We’ll be in all the local papers. Or maybe we won’t, because I saw an empty house in Hove yesterday. We can become squatters.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘Can’t you tell when I’m joking?’

  Pam couldn’t always. ‘Isn’t our place big enough for you?’

  Judy laughed, a more genuine resonance. ‘I hope so. We’ll all live happily together I expect.’

  ‘There should be space for all of us.’

  ‘We’ll talk about it when you get here,’ Judy said.

  ‘We don’t need to.’

  ‘All right, then. It’s settled.’ She sounded glad. There was some disturbance from the children, and Pam heard her shout: ‘Shut up, you pigs. Tom’s coming back. He’ll sort you out.’

  There were cheers.

  ‘We’ll phone from the docks – maybe Newhaven, after Tom’s worked it out. He sends his love.’

  ‘Can’t wait to see you.’

  ‘Nor me you.’

  ‘You’d better hang up,’ Judy said, ‘or you’ll have no money to get back on. Love and kisses to you – both.’

  She turned to Tom on putting the receiver down. ‘That’s that. All fixed.’

  He clipped his case shut. ‘Will she be glad to see us?’

  ‘She will now. The children certainly will. She had imagined we’d be away for a couple of months, but it’ll be only a fortnight.’

  ‘That,’ he said, with more satisfaction than she liked to hear, ‘is fate. Everyone is at its mercy.’

  ‘It wasn’t fate that got me pregnant.’ She turned to her own clothes.

  He ignored her remark, and said: ‘She’ll be all right. We’ll look after them. There’s enough room in the flat for everybody, as I heard you telling her.’

  ‘Or maybe it was fate,’ Pam smiled.

  11

  There was nothing in her mind except the force to get out into the open what little was in it, that much being all she had and therefore of the most vital importance to her. An east wind buffeted the car. He didn’t even see the low hills lifting to left and right. She said: ‘You are destroying me.’

  His hands on the steering wheel gripped more than formerly. She had struck at the middle, and found a rock of truth that she had been feeling for since coming out of that miasma of gas when they first met. And he knew it, she thought, at which he could only keep quiet so as to be able to stay driving safely on the motorway. Their lives seemed more vital to him than anything she could say.

  ‘You’re trying to destroy me, that’s it.’ She was not willing to spare him. The pain was so unremitting that she could not even spare herself. Why did two people live together if they could not confess what pain they felt? Now that she had spoken she seemed more in danger than he could ever be. He knew that, as well, and if he didn’t respond, or reply, she would leap at his hands and bloody her teeth on them, tear at the dark hairs on those fingers confidently curled around the plastic-covered wheel so that he would run off the motorway or into some other vehicle. Death seemed easier than silence. She would reduce him, because the prospect of reducing herself was too final to be borne. The cost to her was infinite, but to him it would be little enough. All her life she had wanted to meet someone strong enough to sustain her central fire of attack, an attack into which was built the very substance of herself. The end had come, and she would fling herself into death; because anything less was worse than death which, though it meant life, she would not live with. She was his equal, and wanted him to know.

  ‘And I won’t be destroyed, not by you or anyone else, but above all not by you.’

  He smiled, but was in agony. Unlike at first meeting, his face was no longer capable of concealing secrets. The ability to create mutual agony was at least a measure of their progress towards each other, as was the happiness they had known an indication of their intimacy. The driving of the car held his pain within bounds. Like the man used to obey, and to obedience, he kept a straight course, still conscious to the extent of moving from lane to lane while overtaking other vehicles. ‘You can’t destroy me,’ he said, ‘which is clearly what you want.’

  He spoke as if out of despair, but she detected a note of triumph. The vivid light and stink of motor fumes made her feel near to death. Any split second, being at the outer limits of a life to which she had brought him, he might swing the car at the bank of a bridge support and end the misery he must feel but which she now told herself she did not. Death was better than no fe
eling. Without feeling you did nothing but that which brought death about. If she was dead she would wake him up, make his heart ring and vibrate to what was in her. He had come from the sea and usurped her place in the world, before bringing her back to it in his fashion. He was all compact and formed and finished beautifully by training and circumstance and heredity, while George had been a millpond of nothingness and she a mere appendage of that. She loved him and she didn’t, but her own terms were made as nothing by his monolithic self-assurance, against which she must prevail so as to save herself from destruction. He was the spirit to her flesh, and she would make them mix on her terms as much as on his. But all she could say was: ‘I won’t be destroyed, whatever you may want.’

  She lacked words for the outside. They were there by the thousand but would not be spoken. She wanted them but couldn’t find any that would tell him what she meant. He loved her, so knew what she wanted to say, but it wasn’t enough unless and until she had been allowed to say everything.

  ‘I love you.’ Each word was as clear and as uncomfortable as grit in his throat. ‘Isn’t that sufficient?’

  It no longer was. She had glimpsed something else. It had taken time, but another light was beginning to expand. She told him that no, it wasn’t enough, as a matter of fact.

  He drove on. ‘It will have to be.’

  She was sure he understood, but knew he might not be able to follow. He overtook an enormous lorry, hands relaxed at the wheel, and went on to put another juggernaut behind them. She struck, smashed, crunched her fist at his hands. ‘It won’t have to be. It won’t.’

  He instantaneously gripped. His expression was unchanged, she struck again, the lorry wheels seeming higher than the car, a cliff-face sliding along with engine roaring and smothering theirs as if they were gliding in silence. He changed gear, flicked on blinkers to reach an inner lane, his lips making imprecations which might have been at the lorry as much as at her. For no reason he switched on the windscreen wipers, perhaps as if to wash her pestering spirit away. They were around the lorry obstacle, and for good measure he swung out again and left two cars behind. He thought he was safe, that he had survived a crisis as he’d triumphed in the fight when George and his brothers had attacked her.