Stepping Westward

by Malcolm Bradbury

  The writing itself came later, with respectability, after he had met Elaine. She was a big unexpected girl who had been imported in a busload from a nurses’ home to attend a student dance. She wore a dress of some thick material and heavily patterned design like a sofa fabric. He didn’t know why he had chosen her that evening, but within days she was expressing a deep proprietorial interest in him. She took him out to parties, bought him drinks in pubs, made him shave. Her friends, people who played tennis and drove sports cars, were his enemies; her taste for expensive drinks and travelling in taxis made him furious; he was bored and frightened by the trips she took him on into the countryside, she carrying great furry handbags that looked like folded-over foxes. He always felt that one day she would pick him up, shove him in her handbag, and click the fastening to. So she had; that was his wedding day. For their honeymoon, Walker had rented a cottage in Cornwall. Here, amid post-marital struggle and sexual euphoria, he had begun his first novel and evolved an effective method of supporting them both without income; he used to go out each night into the countryside with a long knife and reappear with a broccoli, a swede, a cabbage. But gradually the old marginal Walker, the professional student, was converted into a new figure, Walker paterfamilias, fatter, more adjusted, the owner of his own ton of coal. In bed erotic spontaneity seemed to fade under the professional demands of hygiene. ‘Have you washed your hands and face?’ Elaine began murmuring on the first night. ‘Have you cut your nails? You’re not coming to me with your socks on.’ The train journey back from Cornwall advanced the process further. They sat in an open coach, near the lavatory, the door of which would not stay shut. ‘Go and shut it,’ said Elaine. He did so. The door swung open again. ‘It’s open again,’ said Elaine. From Truro to London Walker tried to find a way of keeping the door shut, until finally he completed the journey in the stifling toilet with his foot against the door. ‘We can’t go on like this,’ he said when he emerged. It seemed to him that they had.

  Now the possibility of redeeming this man, in one simple gesture, went to Walker’s head; he got out his raincoat, put it over his pyjamas, and ran downstairs. In the street, trolley-buses swished by in the rain. He went to the callbox, down past the greengrocer’s; liberal housewives from all the other top-floor flats looked up from buying green peppers to stare at his pyjama legs, multicoloured below the gabardine, as if they represented some bawdy invitation. The telephone booth smelled of something very nasty. Walker found four pennies in his raincoat and dialled the hospital switchboard. ‘I’d like to speak to Sister Walker, on Maternity; it’s urgent,’ he said when they answered, putting a note of pleading into his voice; you practically had to say you were giving birth in the callbox before they would connect you. There was a pause and then Elaine’s voice, as professionally stiff and starchy as the uniform she wore, came on to the line. ‘Maternity ward, what is it?’ she said. Walker could imagine her, breathing hard, a dragon in her uniform; she still, after eight years, made him nervous. ‘It’s me, Jim,’ he said.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Elaine.

  ‘Well,’ said Walker, ‘there’s a letter in this morning’s post.’

  ‘Really?’ said Elaine.

  ‘I’ve been asked to go to America.’

  ‘Have you?’ said Elaine. ‘And who by?’

  ‘Well, some university over there is looking for a creative writing fellow and they naturally thought of me.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ said Elaine after a pause.

  ‘Oh, I go and sit around and write creatively and they pay me seven thousand dollars for doing it.’

  ‘I thought you always said that creative writing was ridiculous,’ said Elaine.

  ‘Well, okay, yes, I do,’ said Walker. ‘Still, every man has his price. Mine happens to be six thousand nine hundred dollars.’

  ‘They just topped it,’ said Elaine.

  ‘It looks like it,’ said Walker.

  ‘Do you want to go?’ Elaine then said.

  This was it, and Walker knew it was; he said, ‘Do I?’ and then realized he was being irritating. But how did he know? He tried it another way. ‘Do you?’ he said. Elaine didn’t speak for a moment. Walker felt his ankles getting cold. A brown dog peered into the box at him, and two small boys over the street were apparently accosting people and pointing out to them his pyjama trousers.

  Elaine said, ‘No, I couldn’t possibly, could I? You’d have to go on your own.’

  ‘Think about it,’ said Walker.

  ‘No,’ said Elaine, ‘you’re the one who has to think about it. I can’t go, but you mustn’t let it stop you, if this really is what you want. Would it help your writing?’ Elaine always said ‘your writing’ as other wives of generous character might have said ‘your drinking’, and probably in her mind the two peccadilloes were of pretty much the same order, the sort of thing you tolerated and indeed indulged. The fact that he did it all day under her constant subsidy, for it was on her salary that they both lived, made no difference whatever to her attitude, and never had; a lot of girls had husbands who wouldn’t work. Walker began to read the instructions on the wall of the booth, which were for some odd reason in German, and said slowly, ‘It might.’

  ‘Well, you must consider it seriously, then.’

  ‘Without you?’

  ‘How long is it for?’ enquired Elaine.

  ‘A year. An academic year.’

  ‘Well, a year away from home would probably do you a lot of good,’ said Elaine. ‘Perhaps you’d learn to take care of yourself a bit.’

  Walker said hopefully, ‘Could I manage then?’

  Elaine replied, ‘You could learn to try.’ Then there were noises at the other end, and Elaine seemed to be shouting something in a voice that boomed off the ceiling. Presently her voice came back on the line: ‘Look, ducks, must go,’ she said. ‘Doctor’s rounds. Did you put a clean shirt on this morning?’

  ‘I’m not dressed yet,’ said Walker. As he spoke, he realized he had made a fatal move.

  ‘You’re standing naked in the phonebox?’ demanded Elaine.

  Walker said, ‘I’ve got my pyjamas on.’

  ‘In the phonebox?’

  ‘I’m wearing my raincoat on top,’ said Walker.

  ‘You’re a hopeless case, Jim,’ said Elaine.

  ‘I thought,’ said Walker, ‘that medical rule said there were no hopeless cases.’

  ‘I thought so too, before I met you. Well, go home, you nit, before you starve to death. And put a clean shirt on.’

  Walker said, ‘You’re trying to make me middle class.’

  ‘I thought you were middle class,’ said Elaine.

  Walker, who knew he was, knew it bitterly, said, ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Well,’ said Elaine, ‘whatever class you are today, go home before you freeze.’

  ‘See you at four,’ said Walker.

  ‘In a clean shirt,’ said Elaine.

  Going back home, the rain wetting the bottoms of his pyjama trousers, Walker tried to imagine what it would be like to be wifeless. Nothing came to mind. But ambition and hope flourished in his heart, and the need to break this static peace became positive. He smelled the polish in the hall, and disliked it. Back upstairs on his desk the letter sat, calling him to America, as once American writers had been called to Europe. There were paperback copies of Henry James and Henry Adams, dusty in the bookcase, to remind him that there was a tradition in this sort of going, to remind him that there were men who had seen the gangplank of the Cunard steamer as the gateway to new pastures of mind. The market-town world that had fed his last books, the world of Dolcis and Marks and Spencers and the primary school on the corner, could only look thin; and thin, too, was the bland, uncreative British liberalism that gave him his perspective on life. Away, I’m bound away, said his spirit. He ate a peanut and groaned at himself. He stood in the room and felt at odds with it. There was no place in it for growth, for more understanding, for higher sympathies. A vision, please, he cri
ed, a vision! He looked again at the letter and sat down at the desk. Hurriedly, before Elaine came home from the hospital with a changed mind, he sat down at the typewriter which she had bought him as a wedding present and pecked out his note of acceptance. Then he dressed, picking out a clean shirt, and went downstairs again to take the letter to the little post office at the back of the greengrocer’s. Here he watched while it was weighed, stamped, decked out with a blue airmail sticker. Then he went outside to the red English post-box and dropped the letter into it with a hand that visibly vibrated with guilt and excitement.

  The weeks went by, and the voyage became more and more a real thing. The symptoms began to show: the tickets came from the travel agency, the dollars from the bank, and Harris Bourbon, a mere name writing out of the American heartland, offered to have Walker as his house-guest until he found himself some suitable accommodation in Party. Walker went down to London, to be tested for syphilis and intellectual loyalty at the American Embassy. He arranged his visit to coincide with a sit-down protest outside it; it asserted his independence, and there was little point in making two trips. Sitting on the pavement, hidden out of sight behind a banner, he looked at the building where all his hopes and fears lay. The uneasy morning sickness of the first weeks disappeared, and Walker found himself adapting to the change, and growing spiritually more enormous. There were moments when he had doubts, after reading of race-riots or cyclones across the Atlantic; but more often he felt pleasure and the sense that he was turning into a citizen of the world. Then the actual day of departure came, a bright day in late August when Nottingham sat in comfortable sunlight and the chimes of the Council House clock rang out nine as he arrived at the Midland Station with his departure committee, composed of wife and child.

  ‘You know,’ said Elaine, ‘I shall miss you. All that time.’

  Walker, full of doubts now, trying hard to avoid sentiments of guilt at his leaving, said cheerily, ‘It’s only for nine months.’

  ‘A lot can happen in nine months,’ said Elaine.

  Walker refused to be sad. ‘I hope it doesn’t,’ he said, trotting down the steps of the overbridge, a suitcase hung with ship’s labels suspended from each hand. Twirls of train smoke blew across the platforms into their noses, and people hurrying to work locally jostled by them to pile into little green diesel trains. Further down the London platform black-suited businessmen, holding leather briefcases, stood exactly at the point where the first-class carriages would halt. He put down his suitcases and wiped his brow with his sleeve, while two neglected porters watched and sniggered.

  ‘Well, this is it, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I hope I’m doing the right thing.’

  ‘You always have,’ said Elaine, ‘ – hoped, I mean.’ There was a bookstall behind them, laden with westerns and other people’s novels; Elaine went and bought a Guardian, to push into his jacket pocket. ‘For your lively mind,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t forget to take your values with you.’

  Feelings of departure hung over them. They stood in silence for a moment, Walker, Elaine and their daughter Amanda, a podgy, puritan, bespectacled creature, carrying his portable typewriter.

  ‘Now be polite to America, you hear me?’ said Elaine. ‘Think before you speak. Don’t forget you’re an ambassador.’

  Walker smiled and said, ‘Some ambassador!’

  ‘People will judge England by what you say and do,’ said Elaine, looking at him sceptically. ‘Some of them over there will never have seen an Englishman before. Act sensibly. Don’t get in any fights. Don’t join any processions, you know how you do.’

  ‘I can only be myself,’ said Walker, conscious he was offering the world a valuable commodity.

  ‘Oh, Jim,’ said Elaine, ‘the flat will seem quite empty when you’re away.’

  Walker was fearful of the pressure of sentiment, for there was no confidence in him that all this was proper and right, and so he said, ‘Oh, you’ll get used to it, you’ll enjoy it for a change. And besides,’ he went on, beaming forcedly at Amanda, ‘Amanda will take care of her mummy, won’t you?’

  ‘No,’ said Amanda, flashing her spectacles, ‘’cause I’m going to America with Daddy.’

  ‘Oh no you’re not,’ said Walker, looking at the child, the fruit of his loins, with the terror that from time to time she inspired in him, ‘you’re staying here.’

  Amanda was firm: ‘Oh yes I am,’ she said. Walker suddenly saw his future threatened, saw an ignominious return home to the flat to sort out this crisis.

  He was essentially a rational man and he brought reason to the fore. ‘Come here,’ he said, crouching down, ‘and Daddy’ll explain to you the difference between wants that can be fulfilled and those which can’t.’

  ‘I don’t like being explained to,’ said Amanda, dropping the typewriter, which hit the ground with a rattle of keys, ‘I’m going to America with Daddy.’

  Walker gazed hopelessly at his daughter, a folly of the first year of their marriage, conceived when he was more prone to gestures towards posterity and society than he was now; he now had another response to offer to the future. He tried to go on being reasonable. ‘You can’t go,’ he said, ‘and for three reasons: one, Daddy hasn’t got enough money to take Mummy and Amanda with him; two, Mummy and Gran need their Amanda to look after them while Daddy’s away; three, Peter Panda is waiting at home for Amanda to go and put him to bed in his cot.’

  ‘How old do you think I am?’ said Amanda. ‘I’m seven and I’m going to America.’

  ‘You talk to her, Elaine,’ he said.

  ‘Out of the way, Jim,’ said Elaine. ‘Come here, Amanda, and shut up, for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘All right,’ said Amanda.

  ‘Let’s let Daddy go off and leave us,’ said Elaine. ‘He’ll learn to appreciate us more. He doesn’t know how much he needs us, does he?’

  ‘No,’ said Amanda.

  ‘So you tell him to be good while he’s away, and not be lascivious. Tell him that.’

  ‘Be good, Daddy,’ said Amanda, ‘and don’t be sivious.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Walker, wondering whether he would. He felt, as usual, defeated by this female conspiracy, but it was the last defeat in that line he would suffer for some time.

  ‘And write to us, won’t you?’ said Elaine. ‘Tell us about all the fun you’re having. I know if you aren’t having fun you’ll write, but try and report the good things as well.’

  ‘All right,’ said Walker.

  The London train came in, drawn by a black engine, blustering smoke beneath the overbridge. It travelled down the platform and stopped at the far end of it. ‘Come on, you’ll have to run,’ said Elaine. Walker picked up the suitcases and the typewriter and broke into a trot. There was an empty second-class compartment in the last coach, tricked out with maroon upholstery and sepia photographs of winds blowing over the Gleneagles Hotel. Elaine opened the door and he got in and heaved his luggage up on to the rack. Elaine stood outside and watched him; then, as he came back to the door, she reached out and delicately, with two fingers, lifted up the bottom of his trouser leg and exposed him to the knee. ‘I thought as much,’ she said. ‘What socks have you got on?’

  ‘You can see which socks I’ve got on,’ said Walker, ‘so can everybody.’

  ‘Amanda,’ said Elaine, ‘can you smell Daddy’s feet?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Amanda, ‘they’re terrible.’

  Elaine opened her foxy handbag and pulled out a little pair of rolled socks. ‘Put these on,’ said Elaine. ‘You’re disgusting.’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said Walker. The guard’s whistle blew and Elaine pushed the door shut.

  ‘Make sure it’s properly fastened before you lean on it,’ said Elaine. ‘You’d look a fool if you fell out at this stage.’ The engine blew off steam; the wheels gripped; the train began to move. Walker stuck his head out of the window, feeling the sun beat upon it, and felt a great sense of release.

  ‘Say goodbye to Daddy,’
said Elaine to their daughter as they trotted lightly to keep up with the moving train.

  ‘Goodbye, Daddy,’ said Amanda. ‘And Peter Panda says goodbye too.’

  A seed that had been growing within Walker germinated suddenly, and he tore the veil from unreality in a phrase: ‘No, he doesn’t,’ he cried, ‘because he can’t bloody well talk.’ He looked at Elaine and added, ‘And I’ll change my socks when I like.’

  ‘God bless you, Jim,’ shouted Elaine, stopping moving.

  ‘Goodbye, darlings,’ shouted Walker, full of guilt for what he had done, and what he was doing, and the irresponsibility he was performing in leaving like this. He blew a few kisses and then the train took a curve and they were gone from view. The sun shone into the coach. He sat down and felt the train moving through the Nottingham backstreets, with their grey Midland mist, past the cattle market, the woodyard, the Co-operative bakery. Now, suddenly, there was a blurred mass of metal, all angles and fury, like a wild abstract sculpture; the train was crossing the heavy iron bridge over the River Trent, which marked for Walker the boundary between the north of England and the south. Behind him, now, lay decency, plain speaking, good feeling; ahead lay the southern counties, all suede shoes and Babycham. A strange queasy sensation, as if two holes had been bored into the lower part of his stomach, letting the contents flow into his legs, came to him. He was alone; his wife and child were gone; two suitcases and an old typewriter were all there was of him. The cases, which he had bought for their honeymoon, looked unprepossessing; the typewriter, a tired and elderly machine with a black rexine case, added a final parochial touch. Already he felt a foreigner in the world. The fine Midland countryside, with its valleys and long scarps of land, its brick cottages and sharp church spires, sat peacefully and domestically in the heat haze; but already signs of disjunction and southerliness were evident. The architecture was altering faintly; the names of unknown foreign villages showed on signposts; the people began to look different.