by A. L. Barker
“You said you never knew your mother.”
“Never knew my own mother? Why, I like that, I like it all. She was a respectable woman, she had her family the right side of the blanket.”
“You said you were found in a beansack.”
“I did? Tell you what, missis, you don’t remember, that’s your trouble.”
*
There were no clocks on the boat, Garnett didn’t use time. He did everything when he felt like it and she had to get used to the day going by him instead of by the sun. His work was casual jobbing on the boats moored along the river, he might start at noon or at daybreak or not at all.
Mealtimes were when he was hungry. He called all meals ‘dinner’—if he cooked it there was in fact nothing to choose between supper and breakfast, it was always sausage and bacon and thick tea. She tried her hand at the primus in the galley, there was no wick on the second burner but she baked a custard pudding and a cake in the rusty oven and Garnett ate them both with a spoon.
She never knew when he would come back. Once it wasn’t until the small hours, she lay all night listening to the boat drawing and slacking on its moorings. The daylight leaked first out of the varnished walls, then out of the air, only the crockery on the table still caught a faint shine from the river. She was not unhappy, she felt herself lapsing like everything else, though not from emptiness because the place was full of him. He left so much of himself she wondered that there could be enough to take away.
He’s somewhere drinking, she thought, and she could see him pouring beer down his throat as if he’d just walked across a desert. He’s singing about Rose Marie and Waltzing Matilda. The strong treacly voice rolled round her in the dark and she shivered—I hate drunks—but under her wincing skin she was warm as toast.
The boat drew away from the bank and lay on its ropes, straining every beam. Then it relaxed and sidled back again. She relaxed with it, she could never disassociate herself from those movements.
He can’t drink all the time, not even him, he’ll be sleeping it off somewhere. She turned into the pillow—I don’t have to see pigs asleep to know what they look like.
She thought she heard someone out on the towpath, someone confused and furtive, up to anything from sawing a hole in the boat to murder, and it occurred to her that she was alone for a mile or two either way. She got up and shot the bolt on the cabin door. Through the window she could see anything she fancied, one minute a group of people, the next a contortionist passing himself through a motor tyre. She thought what a bad habit she was getting into of making something out of nothing.
It was not daylight when Garnett returned and she heard him go into the galley. She hadn’t slept, she felt tied up tight yet haphazard, ready to fall apart at a pull on the string. She lay listening to his movements; after the hollow night and the aimless noises of the boat the sounds he made had meaning closer than words. She saw what he was doing as if there were no door between: he’s lighting the stove, he’s going to cook something—that’s the frying pan clattering down. Now he’s taking a knife from the drawer, holding it like a straw, everything looks small in his fingers—he’s got the basin of fat, cutting chunks and dropping them into the pan. Why should I feel because he’s come back? Why everything at once as if all the taps have been turned on?
She got out of the bunk; either she was going to welcome him or she was tired of lying down. Being alone, that was, having no one else to think about, not even a memory. She opened the door to the galley. He was standing over the stove, his face shining with the day’s grease and his overalls unbuttoned to the waist.
“Where have you been?”
He looked up in surprise and she could see that she had been right out of his mind.
“Me?” He had forgotten her existence, she could practically watch him jockeying her into the picture. He tipped the fat to and fro in the pan. “You want your dinner?”
“You haven’t been working all this time.”
She heard the question in that: for God’s sake, she thought, am I hoping to believe the answer?
“Me?” he said and she might have laughed if she had wanted to, at the way his face was working up into cunning. “Now that’s a funny thing. I can’t remember.”
She was ashamed for them both, as ashamed as if others were there to hear. She hoped even then that he wouldn’t push it to the end.
“Forgot my memory I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Do you think that’s funny?”
His lips shone with joy and the joy caught on, caught on everywhere except on her. She stood separate as a clown in the circus ring.
“You’ve never believed me.” The misery that came over her was part pain, part pity for it, and partly a lasting ache of loneliness. She didn’t cry, she felt a sweat of tears all over her face. “Do you think I’d stay here if I knew where to go?” Her gesture of contempt turned into a fumbling movement.
“There’s no going back to what you did, and you know it.” He went to her and touched her face, the wetness seemed to please him, like some special knack. “Oh, you’d stay all right, you like it here. Trying to grow in, you are.” His hand shouldn’t be under her chin, the splayed fingers covering her cheek, the first flesh and blood in a world of shadows. There was nothing to feel except anger and insult and she was feeling that. For a split second she kept herself to herself, then there was no self, there was only his hand and she was folding into it like melting wax. She was aware of no more even of him when she turned her head and pressed her open mouth into his palm. It was as if in terrible hunger she fed from his hand.
The same hand brought her back, a long way back. She would have fallen but the edge of the door caught her between the shoulders. Garnett had turned to the stove, was dropping sausages into the pan. With a slow shocked movement she touched her face, she was only just feeling the violence with which he had rubbed her cheek, casually as he would the muzzle of an animal.
“You’d like to stay all right.”
She was back, parcelled up again in her empty skin with the funny side out and the moment of fusion might never have been. Not with him, anyway—she prayed that it hadn’t been with him.
“Like? I hate it!” In her shame she couldn’t say enough. “I hate it here—dirty, rat-ridden, ugly place—”
His grin stopped her. It would, she thought, have turned the strongest stomach. “Oh, I seen what you like, missis.”
He forked over the sausages, offering her a share with a thrust of the pan. When she refused he took one up in his fingers and ate it, wincing and grinning as it burned his mouth.
She could forgive him anything but his humour—it couldn’t even be called that because humour was shared and this was just a state, irrespective and private as a blind spot.
“Make the tea.”
He sat on the table eating sausages out of the pan. She did not move: she had asked for his manner, it was the thought of squeezing past him to the stove that she disliked.
“What are you waiting for?”
“Please,” she said. “You could say please.”
“It wouldn’t change nothing. If you don’t please, I will. I’m used to getting my own tea.”
She filled the kettle from the tank and took it to the stove. As she passed him she pressed herself against the wall and he said, “Shy, are you?” She turned up the burner under the kettle and got out the cups. He watched her as he ate, pulping the food in his open jaws. She turned away, there was no need to feed her disgust by looking at him.
It was still dark outside, but in the river there were flakes of light from somewhere and when they met it would be day—another out of how many? She ought to have a time to put to it because today was the last, today she was going, she had to. It was the only certainty, to go was right, to stay would be wrong—that at least she was clear about. The rest, the self she had been trying to establish, had been surmise and now was shattered. She would not try to pick up the pieces, they weren’t even the righ
t pieces.
“You an’t the first to show human.”
Human? That’s another name for it, she thought.
“And this an’t the first time you’ve shown it. I don’t have to wonder, missis, I saw the bruises you got.”
“What do you think—just what do you think?” She was afraid he might think right because anything could be right for all she knew.
“Your fancy had his boots on, that’s what I think, and you asked for it. Now you’ll keep out of his way for a bit, won’t you? But if he finds you’re on the Rose what’s my situation?”
“It didn’t happen like that—and I don’t need a memory to tell me.”
“Think you an’t the sort?”
She could look at him now, it would be one of the last times and she forced herself to look for whatever it was she cherished. She was merciless, she went over the gap-jawed grin feature by feature and something shrivelled inside her.
“If you don’t know who you are, missis, you’ve got a high opinion of what you ought to be.”
She felt no more enmity: it was over, whatever he had kindled he had also killed and she could remember it as a temporary disorder of her body that did not need, nor bear, much looking into.
She made the tea strong as he liked it, and filled his cup. He jerked his thumb towards the sugar and she brought it from the shelf and helped him to four heaped spoonfuls.
“You’ve come to the wrong place to be dainty. I got no use for nothing I can’t pick up and carry away.”
“I know.”
“You do?” He stirred his tea till the spoon rang on the cup. “Effing miracle you knowing something.”
“I’ve still got my eyesight.” She was thinking that men weren’t born equal, some weren’t even born men, just creatures like this one, with only the power of speech to set them over animals.
“Think you can see it all by looking?” He was stirring his tea so that it slopped over the cup and ran along a crack in the table. A thin stream of tea trickled down by his boot but he went on stirring and slopping—that was the sort of thing she couldn’t stand, the not noticing, not noticing whether anyone else was alive. “You see an old tub tied up—thinks you, there’s the Rose Vermuylen and a spit on the drum would pay for the lot.” His grin had lapsed, he was struggling with something unfamiliar—righteousness was it, or a thought? “You might as well size up a woman by what’s left of her in the boneyard. The Rose was royalty once, you’d have thought yourself lucky to see her go by, all gold brass and varnish fit to blind you. The deck was white as a lily—she even had canvas sheets to stop her paint from blistering in the sun.”
“I thought you said this was a coal barge.”
“Coal? She was the Grand Union showboat, she never carried nothing dirtier than her old man’s tongue. Decked out like a lady’s boodor, flowers painted all over her, large as life and twice as real. You could pick the roses off her—”
She had to laugh. “Whoever heard of roses on a boat?”
“An’t her name Rose?” He was glaring and she warmed because after all there was somewhere he could be touched, he had a raw place like everyone else. What a thing to get worked up about, she thought.
“I’m telling you!” He beat his fist on the table and she smiled, seeing the funny side for once. “This was a fly boat, she had no engine, she went up and down behind a pair of horses and people came out to see her curly brass and her pictures, she was the prettiest boat on the river. You and me wouldn’t have been let on board, not even to polish the nailheads.”
“Why should I believe you? You don’t believe me.”
He watched her wipe the spilled tea from the table and floor. He was breathing hard, she thought he would have kicked her while she was on her knees—she would have taken it as coming from the touch on the raw. He’ll sulk, she thought, he always does, and then he’ll bring me something or tell me something, or he’ll make up something to show we’re friends. Always? But it had never happened before, not with him. And why did she think of him bringing something in his hands, dark green water—
“Give me some tea,” he said, “I’ve got a neck like a limekiln.”
He drained the cup with one swallow. Then he sat silently pushing the empty cup about the table. Strange how barefaced he was without the grin, it was as good as a disguise. There was really nothing else to know him by. His was a communal face, forgettable even as she looked. Without the grin all the butcher’s red and blue went out of it, no one feature had any effect, good or bad, on any other—they simply made up a convenient set. Convenient because if she looked hard enough she could see the beginnings of other faces—
It came to her then with a clap, a kind of thunder clap. She said aloud, “What other faces?”
“Eh?”
“Nothing.” She turned away and leaned her forehead against the window. The darkness was moving inside itself like smoke, it would soon be day. But not soon enough. Now that she had made up her mind she wanted to be gone, it didn’t matter where, what mattered was that she shouldn’t be here.
“Nothing’s your trouble—give it away, don’t you? Button up, don’t let your breath come out. Well, I’ve got a free conscience, ask me a straight question and I’ll give a straight answer.” He was pop-eyed with anger, the veins in his neck stood out square. “Go on, ask away, ask what you want to know!”
She said soothingly, “I don’t want to know, it’s none of my business.”
“Where was I all night—that’s the question, an’t it? I’ll tell you—under the hedge with a woman.”
It made literal sense at first, she saw him under the hedge, the woman crouching beside him. What were they doing—sheltering from the rain?
“I got fine feelings like anyone else.” His face melted with slyness. “I got love, sometimes I got to give it.”
She saw them again under the hedge. They weren’t sheltering. She saw what they were going to do, it was the awful farcical beginning she saw.
“Mind you, fair’s fair, I don’t give twice in the same place. Love’s a dear thing, some never get it without they pay. Many’s the one I’ve warmed and made joyful—lay them on their backs and they’d reach from here to the Pool of London—and all free out of nature.”
She tried to say that she wasn’t interested, but the words dried on her tongue. She was in torment and even as she asked herself what was there to torment her, she knew. It was like shutting the door on a red ember and finding a raging furnace burning door and all down. She began to shake, she put out her hand and the table shook with her until the crockery rattled.
“Don’t you believe me?”
“Yes, I believe you.”
He gave a shout of laughter. “More fool you, then! Suppose I was to say I don’t like women, never touch them, they bring me out in pimples. How about that? Would you believe that too?”
“Yes.” What he said now didn’t matter, he had already told her the truth.
“The last one to handle me was a hospital nurse. She said I was like a pine tree—‘A clean-living man’s like a pine’, she said, ‘and a dirty one’s like a toadstool.’ You didn’t credit me for that, did you? I’ll tell you something else. I took on to be a priest once, Holy Garnett in a black skirt putting the finger on sinners. It wasn’t for me, too much curtseying to the altar. But I stayed sallybut.” He opened his eyes wide, their glistening blueness made her feel faint. “If it come to it now I wouldn’t know how to begin with a woman.”
Truth was not words, it was a private thing. Oh God, she asked, at least let me keep it private, and she turned her back because she felt it written all over her.
“Where are you going?”
“To get dressed.”
“Dressed or naked it’s all one to me.”
She went into the sleeping cabin and shut the door. She didn’t dress herself. Whatever was going on—fire, battle or bloody murder—there was no putting clothes on it. There was no doing anything. She was the vessel for it whe
ther she held together or not.
One emotion, however ugly, would have been sensible and clean; she was getting a whole dirty boiling. She was getting what had been coming to her, what she had been afraid of, hated and ached for, strained after and fought shy of as long as she could remember. Garnett was the half of it, for his half there was a bible word.
I am up here, she tried telling herself, whatever I am is in my head and I haven’t wanted anything of him with that.
It was right to put the blame below the neck because from there on was common ground, all women were shaped like whores. What she had wanted in her own right mind was decent behaviour, she wanted him to behave like a man, not an animal, she wanted to respect him.
She climbed into the bunk. She was tired and there was as yet only a guttering of light on the river. She thought she might as well rest until it was time to go, but when she lay down she was so alive to herself that her body took the act of lying down as a kind of yielding. Her strength ran out like water, the too light touch of the blanket on her breasts and thighs was torment. Whether she liked it or not she went all the way down, she was one crying, blistering want, and it wasn’t respect she wanted.
The day she came he had undressed her and it had begun then with him touching her and getting into her system. Not that there was much harm in him, he could muddy but he couldn’t corrupt, he was only the half of it. The other half, the woman—she was the heart of the matter.
There was only the one woman and she fitted exactly into an old wound. Her image was not to be blinked away or forgotten again, a woman in black with her head down as if against rain. Garnett’s woman, any man’s—yet it was he who belonged, it was any man who was possessed. If Garnett was the flesh, the woman was more like the devil and the whole affair as private as a circus.
She sat upright, letting the blanket fall aside and the cold air cobble up her naked skin. This was a special pain that dropped into its own place. It had never been private, Garnett alone couldn’t have hurt like this, nor could she have been so shamed if it wasn’t common knowledge.
