Her Victory

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘I’m one of those who have to.’

  ‘But do you want to?’ asked Judy.

  ‘I don’t suppose I’ll know the answer to that one until I get there. But there’s more to it than just wanting to. It’s bigger than that, beyond discussion, like so much else.’

  ‘Now you’re talking!’ Judy mocked.

  He stood apart, conscious of the fact that in a week he would no longer be with them. They knew it. Hilary held his hands tight. ‘Will you play Monopoly with us, Tom?’

  ‘It’s no use,’ he laughed. ‘You always win.’

  She pulled at him. The sleeve of his coat covered the back of his hand. Everyone else’s need was greater than your own. He smiled when Hilary said: ‘Not every time, I don’t.’

  ‘We’ll let you win,’ Sam promised.

  ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘My last game of Monopoly!’

  ‘Leave him alone, you little vampires.’ But Judy took the baby from Sam, because she knew Tom would play a game or two with them.

  22

  ‘While waiting for the ship at Piraeus I walked along the boulevard by the docks looking in shop windows, but nothing interested me. Since leaving you and Rachel I was an empty skin, able to move but not think, capable of facing the future, but not daring to wonder about the past. I felt part of a system, if such it can be called, that was pulling me to the centre, sleep-walking me to a conclusion that can turn out to be nothing except a real beginning. It’s a relief to be without options at last.

  ‘Like the normal passenger I was I loitered till it was time for the ship to sail, but felt more lost than I’d ever been during my sailor life when I hit a funny port and wondered how to pass the time before going back to my cabin.

  ‘I was in a state of well-being, but sorry to have left you, knowing from experience that it is always more depressing for those who stay behind, no matter what the circumstances. To that extent I felt twinges of guilt and uncertainty. In fact it might be true to say that what I didn’t feel would hardly be worth writing about! I was also obviously sorry at leaving Rachel, though perhaps on her part she’ll miss me less at the tender age of three months than she would if I had left my departure till much later. The quicker the move, the healthier for everyone.

  ‘The ship didn’t leave until two o’clock, and much loading had to be done, as I saw from a stroll along the quay. I probably walked around the docks to the shipping office to get my ticket checked more times than was necessary. The ship would be full. People had boxes, bundles, plastic bags, rucksacks, suitcases, trunks, and cardboard boxes tied up with string. Bedding (including a whole bedframe) was going up the stern gangplank. A line of cars was waiting to go into the hold. All luggage was being searched, in case a terrorist should plant something there.

  ‘I strolled back to the dock gates. There was still no hurry. I repeated to myself that I was going to Israel, said the word over and over like an incantation, and a port worker who went by must have thought I was going a bit crackers in the midday sun. Perhaps I was. Perhaps I am. I would get to Haifa, so then where would I go? Jerusalem is the capital city of Israel, I said, therefore it is natural to go to that place. But would I lodge there for good, or fix something up near the desert, or work in orange groves on some kibbutz or other, or stay close to the sea? Sooner or later I would have to make myself useful. Where would I pray if the need arose, as it surely will? I’d find a synagogue – no difficulty there! – to give thanks for my arrival. I had my yarmulka, so they would let me in. I hadn’t left my old life in order to settle for less. Israel was, I told myself, the only country in the world I could go to after England. It will supersede England in my mind – a great change, but it will be done. For once in my life I have to prove myself right in a fundamental choice, not out of fate, egotism or force of circumstance, but due to a religious reason that is at the very middle of me.

  ‘I walked back to the boulevard. A tram was going by, and I almost ran after it. Both sections turned a corner before I could make up my mind to get on. My body and spirit played a game, joining forces to perform a trick I didn’t fall for. A car bonnet passed close as I crossed the road, its hooter screeching. The heat was terrific, coming out of an emptiness I thought had been left behind. (They said there was a heat wave in Greece at the moment.) That emptiness was caused by my leaving you and Rachel. I sat on a seat by some stunted bushes, a huge ship rearing on the other side of the railings. It is impossible to leave anything behind. The past stays with you, or that’s how it feels at the moment, a part of your irreducible torment that you see reminders of again and again, memories that render down and become one more contribution to the unconscious.

  ‘The whistle of a departing ship reminded me that time went on and there was less possibility of retreat, no matter what going forward might mean. We will survive, the three of us, whatever happens, because in our different ways we have already learned never to be afraid.

  ‘The ship set off through industrial mist and sailed among the isles of Greece. I ate a meal, slept for an hour, then looked from the rail at rocks and ashy mountains poking their summits out of the clear blue mirror of the sea. It was only now, seeing the last markings of my departure from what to me was the old world, that all nerve seemed to go, and the questions began. The effect was terrifying, striking at the most vulnerable part and at the worst moment – as of course it must. I had not expected it, when I ought to have done, though even if I had braced myself, the effect would have been no different. There was little use denying or avoiding it. I was down among the jellyfish, make no mistake about that.

  ‘Everything I thought appeared to me as the truth, and the denials that immediately countered it were also nothing but the truth – as if the experience I had let myself in for was determined to change even the basic chemistry of my mind. The journey so far had been full of interest. I had been on the move, and there had been little time to think, but now, not only was I alone, and a passenger who had nothing to do while crossing the sea, but I was back on a ship, in the place where I had spent most of my life before finding out who I was and what my connection with the past had been.

  ‘I should have known. I had not given sufficient forethought to avoiding the most obvious pitfalls of my transference. Not only was I back in my former life with an intensity neither desired nor anticipated but, having no connection with it in a working capacity (nor any urge to be so), was doubly lost. Every facet of me that I was, or had been, or intended to become, fell away and left me as a monument of nothingness. I felt ice inside me, growing every second as I stood at the rail, a coldness that made my teeth clatter and my body shake, the extent of the ice inside me increasing until its volume went far beyond the size of my body and became an iceberg into whose space and constituents I had entirely disappeared.

  ‘I don’t think I would have come out of it – I would have thrown myself overboard and drowned, that’s one thing I am certain of – if one word had not come to my rescue. I don’t know how much time passed: perhaps not much, but in a few moments the word had dissolved my paralysis. The sound activated itself from the disciplined service I had been part of for thirty-odd years, but it also formed the definition of something that had been with me ever since I had been born. The word, which began to melt the iceberg that encased me, was fear. Fear had been with me for as long as I could remember, a fear mostly half-buried, usually totally so, from as far back as even before I was born. It had led me into every situation of my life, perilous or not, thrown me into all changes, even this one. It had earlier ushered me into becoming a merchant seaman, a very good move, thus allowing me to conquer fear, as I thought, once and for all. Perhaps it also pushed me into the present move, and that’s why I allowed it to happen.

  ‘As I stood by the rail therefore, contemplating my final move out of the iceberg and into the sea, the word fear spoke itself plainly through to what remained of my consciousness. I heard it, and the spark that struck warmed me back into the world. “You’r
e afraid,” I said to myself, “stricken with unholy and destructive fear.” And discipline took up the call, and expanded on it with words that made me sweat, but which stopped my helpless trembling. That single word brought me back to life, but the word attached itself to many others, before I banished it for ever. Early in my seafaring life an old captain said to me: “Fear God, but nothing else!” The natural and no doubt healthy scorn of the young caused me to pull the saying into myself and then forget it. But as the word came to me I realized that all my life I had been driven everywhere by fear, and even had feared life itself. During the final move that was being made away from it, which when completed meant that I would be able to fear God and nothing else, savage fear made one last attack upon me, but as I walked a free man away from the dusk and down the companionway, I knew I had defeated it.

  ‘I slept in the oven of a cabin, and woke the next day refreshed and calm. The boat was crowded and scruffy, and I sat by the stern with my Hebrew grammar. After calling at Cyprus I felt almost home. I was impatient to see the hills and coastline of Israel, at times wishing I had gone there by aeroplane, but consoling myself with the fact that tomorrow I would be in Jerusalem, that next year would have become this year! In the morning I dressed and went on deck. There was a breeze, the ship rolling slightly, but no sight of land. I wondered how I came to be on a ship, waiting to see Israel rise out of the dawn, such a vast change to a year ago. But I couldn’t think backwards any more. There would be no more of that. I would like it where I was going because there was nowhere else. Every move in my life had been to the same end, but this time there was a motive for my shift of vision, a connection which I had often sensed, but missed because the evidence of my feelings had not been there.

  ‘The decks were crowded. Somebody claimed to see land, but it was nowhere in sight. Israelis, pilgrims and tourists jostled for a place at the rails. After breakfast we saw the coast clearly. The ship waited for a pilot boat to show us our moorings. A police launch stood by with machine-guns mounted – or maybe it was part of the Israeli Navy. The only Hebrew I spoke was that of having to do with First Seeing the Land.

  ‘The mist cleared. I looked through binoculars at the coast and the old Crusader town of Akko till my eyes ran from the strain. I saw the docks of Haifa, and the long back of Mount Carmel with modern buildings crowding the northern spur. A notice said no photos were allowed. It was a busy harbour, with plenty of traffic. People were waiting by the sheds to greet lucky passengers. There were cars and lorries beyond the dock gates, and pedestrians in summer clothes. Gangways were lowered, but it took an hour to get through tedious landing formalities.

  ‘By sharing a taxi I was in Jerusalem at midday. I sat in a café with my suitcases, watching people go by and sampling that smell of musk and spicy food on Ben Yehuda Street. Using the café telephone I located a hotel with a vacant room. It turned out to be somewhat modest, and I was told I was lucky to get it with so many tourists crowding in, but it was a place to sleep and leave luggage while I wandered around.

  ‘There was less heat than on the coast. The sky was blue when I stood below a windmill and saw the crenellations of the city walls. I wanted to reach out and touch them, but they were too far away. So I looked. I looked at the walls and at Mount Zion for half an hour, impossible to exult or brood after so long, only to stand still and look with steady recognition at a scene I had heard of and read about even from my Bible days at the orphanage. The agony of being without a past was over, however bleak the future might be.

  ‘Many tourists were coming and going, bringing a babble of languages from all over the world. I walked at my usual quick speed between some houses and down the hill, as if I had been there before, across the valley and up to the Jaffa Gate. At the open space inside I bought a glass of freshly pressed orange juice, glancing at the people as I stood and drank.

  ‘Pushing my way down David Street, I had to step around places where the road was up. It was as if I had arranged to meet someone and was already late. I stopped a soldier and asked the way to the Western Wall. It used to be called the Wailing Wall, but I learned in the taxi, when one of the passengers corrected me in a very brash way, that it doesn’t have that name any more.

  ‘So much space in the middle of a cramped city came as a surprise, but once you’re in there’s no doubt where the Wall is. A soldier examined my haversack, for bombs, I suppose. Then I put on my yarmulka and went into the enclosure. There’s a place for men, and a place for women, which I suppose neither you nor Judy would like! I stared mindlessly for a few minutes, before letting my hand touch the stone. When the Hashemites from over the River Jordan occupied this area no Jews were allowed in, I was later told. The Wall cut off the sky, but was a lightning rod in contact with it. A few people on either side were praying, wearing shawls and weaving back and forth. Without intending, my forehead was touching the Wall. How long I was there I don’t know. I was with you. Then I was with myself only. I was mulling on all I had discovered about my mother, reliving every event up to her death. Perhaps if she hadn’t died we would both have been here.

  ‘I lost a sense of time when my hands touched the Wall, unable to let go because it seemed alive. If ever there was a man in a dream that man was me, but the dream knew what it was doing, even if I didn’t. I pressed the Star of David from my mother to the rough surface to prove that one of us had come back to where we belonged. The action comforted me, however outlandish it might seem to you – and in some ways seemed to me when I realized what I was doing.

  ‘After dark I walked to the Jaffa Gate and out of the City. Back in my room, with a dull bulb glowing, I felt calmer. It is my home for the moment. I’m reminded of when you were in your room in London, as I try to stamp my own personality on to it, even though I may be here only a few days more. My half dozen books are on a shelf, my map on the wall, and the sextant on the dressing-table. All I need for the moment is this small room, and I feel richer than Solomon at knowing it is in Jerusalem.

  ‘I still don’t know why I left you and Rachel, but there was no other way. I feel pared to the bone by the mindless search which has now come to a stop. The fact that there is no going on will take getting used to. Unless the unified heart is wholly committed to life, no one can truthfully speak of the oneness of existence. There had to be a stop. It is irreligious to strive for the absolute, which is beyond human comprehension. A deeper meaning can only be found by searching within a closed circle, through actions rather than words, but actions that are good rather than evil. One must cultivate justice, love and mercy, in so far as one’s life and one’s country are spared to let you do so.

  ‘The place I have chosen is the one that by birth was chosen for me. I am under no illusions. That too would be a sin, because we know, or should, that illusions pave the way to greater evils than those which might already be close by. Israel is in the middle of the world, and I can’t help feeling that it is a rock on which the stability of the world depends. At the same time it is a country like any other, while also like no other country. You have to be here to feel it. First impressions count for much, even though they might amuse those who have been here so long they have forgotten what their first impressions were – if such a thing is possible.

  ‘I speak to people in the cafés, and my poor knowledge of Hebrew – though it is improving – brings comments as well as a few laughs, but I use it without any self-consciousness. Someone generally speaks English, so it’s not difficult to start a conversation. I mostly listen, however, to what goes on among the others, being too diffident about putting in my no doubt naïve opinions. What they are, I have formulated over the past year, and confirmed during the time I have been here. If I had no such opinions how could I have been here in the first place?

  ‘While life is normal, one senses a faint electricity of danger in the air. At least I do, though perhaps that’s because I’m still a stranger. Maybe it’s only a more-than-usual feeling of existence, an urgency, liveliness and tension c
oming from three million people back in their own land after having been denied it for so long, and determined to survive in spite of all adversities. But such a feeling as mine only makes life seem more real, because I’ve long been used to the feeling, as one always was on a ship, and especially during the war. Maybe it’s best for me to have come, after all, to a country where danger of some kind is never felt to be absent. Not that there isn’t a need for such vigilance everywhere. Explosions occur in London as well as in Israel, and no doubt will continue to do so – though I haven’t heard of any here as yet. It is a factor of modern life, and also the kind of evil that has always been with us, which indiscriminately strikes every time at the innocent. Various countries have no option but to live with it, and to contain it till, like a visitation of the plague to which a healthy country cannot finally succumb, it goes away. Whatever there is to live with will, after a while, seem ordinary enough. To be surrounded by enemies is a form of reality, and in this country life goes on as normally as anywhere else. It is a new nation still, not thirty years old, going through flux without end, from inside and out. But it will endure, no matter what, and to be here fills me with a joyous will to live.’

  23

  She read the letters from Tom after supper. There were no secrets from Judy. They placed their armchairs by the fireplace, each with their separate side-light and pot of coffee, enjoying that silence when children are in bed. Tom had been gone a month, and until each letter came it seemed to Pam as if she had never known him. But the letters brought him vividly back, even more so when she read them to Judy. The only part that remained was Rachel. When Tom was present Rachel looked like him, but when Tom was away it was Tom who resembled Rachel, so that whatever she felt, she was fundamentally linked with him. Life with Judy and the children seemed settled, yet the flat was only a half-way house until the time came to be on the move again.