Sweet William

by Beryl Bainbridge

  He was telling the truth. His voice was rough with emotion, unless it was the strain of his multiple yawns – and though she didn’t like or understand what he meant by compartments, she did know he was being sincere.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I do believe you.’

  They lay on the sofa with the daylight beginning to grow outside the window, his arm loosely about her. It was dreadfully sad and yet beautiful. There wasn’t anything, actually, you could do with love once you’d talked about it. After it had been mentioned, it hung like smoke in the air and drifted this way and that. What kind of compartments did he mean – air-tight ones or the sort on railway trains? Was she locked away on her own, or was he in the compartment with her? His desk was here, his best suit, his razor in the bathroom. Even if he had gone to bed with his wife, did it matter? Edna wasn’t beautiful or even young: she was forty-two and grey-haired and life was putting the boot in. You couldn’t hope to be all things to one person at all times. It made her feel important and extended, having come to such a conclusion. She hadn’t known how philosophical she could be. It was something in him that brought out the best in her.

  ‘Let’s not think about it too much,’ she said cunningly. ‘Let’s just go to sleep and wake up together.’

  He didn’t go and see Edna or the children for several days. Once he went out on his bicycle to visit Gus. From the window Ann saw him on the pavement pushing a brown paper parcel inside his raincoat. He’d said he was taking some shirts to Gus, who was unemployed at the moment. It was sensible to put the parcel against his heart: otherwise he wouldn’t be able to steer properly.

  ‘Don’t be long,’ she called, and he blew her a kiss. He was back within the hour.

  Pamela was discharged from hospital and Ann took care of her. Having survived William’s deceit, she felt she was now older and more capable of love. She brushed Pamela’s hair, made her toast and boiled egg, bought her a new flannel – bright purple – from John Barnes. She made little jokes to take Pamela’s mind off her recent ordeal – about home, their mothers’ combined snobbery. She even laughed about her father in the greenhouse, all those years ago.

  ‘Poor man,’ said Pamela, ‘I don’t think they ever do it. Any of our parents.’

  ‘It’s probably all that saluting and standing to attention,’ Ann said. ‘He’s probably done himself an injury.’ And she shrieked with laughter, falling backwards onto the sofa, kicking her heels in the air.

  ‘You have changed,’ said Pamela, watching her from the divan, propped up on cushions and the foot of the bed raised up on William’s dictionaries.

  In the evening they played rummy round the sofa, a penny a hundred. Ann, used to playing with her mother, was astonished by William’s lack of competition. Sometimes he lost on purpose. Now and then he would jump up from the floor and scribble something down on a piece of paper at his desk. His broad back blotted out the light. He showed Ann his cards and asked her what she wanted him to throw away. ‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘Play properly.’

  He had altered the room, rearranged the furniture, hung pictures on the wall of Samuel Palmer and Dennis Law. He had pushed into a cupboard the electric kettle that had stood on the window ledge, the electric clock her mother had given her for her eighteenth birthday. ‘I hate gadgets,’ he had said. ‘I hate all those wires.’ He had moved the lamp to the corner of the room. They sat, the three of them, in near-darkness, peering at the cards. Pamela’s slippers kept falling off. She bent downwards from the sofa to retrieve them, and the Turkish necklace slithered between her breasts, the coins jangling as she moved.

  Ann was embarrassed at night by the violence of William’s love-making – she was sure Pamela must hear them. Brutally he twisted her arms behind her back and held her head still, with his teeth in the soft lobe of her ear. It was exciting, but she was sure they made an awful noise. She imagined the man next door, resigned to the hymn-singing and the laughter, putting his ear to the wall and waiting with renewed hope for them to murder one another. ‘Rubbish,’ said William, ‘He’s bought ear plugs by now, or moved out.’

  In the mornings she opened wide the windows to air the sheets, helped Pamela from the sofa and tucked her into the double bed, to be more comfortable.

  ‘Shall I try to get George to come?’ she asked.

  She wasn’t hostile to George any more. She could see he had merely placed Pamela in a compartment. It wasn’t his fault if someone had pulled the communication cord and hurled everyone out onto the platform.

  ‘No,’ said Pamela. ‘Leave it. I’ll phone soon.’

  Ann, determined to take Edna’s place, shopped every morning on the Finchley Road. She wouldn’t take money from William; she insisted on drawing on her savings at the bank. On the third day, when she came in from buying a chicken, she was upset to find William, dressed only in a shirt, on the bed with Pamela. He was reading her his play.

  ‘You’ve never read it to me,’ cried Ann, sick with jealousy.

  He leapt up at once and put on his trousers and came through to her in the kitchen.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Leave that alone and look at my play.’

  He put the script in front of her. She wouldn’t open it.

  ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not right.’

  ‘What isn’t?’ he said.

  ‘Lying on our bed, with her. Without your clothes.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘Don’t be so bloody narrow. I’m like a brother to her.’

  Being an only child, she was in no position to judge. Sulkily she turned the foolscap sheets. There were at least two pages devoted to three old men talking about a billiard table. They kept repeating the same sentences.

  ‘Are they important?’ she asked. ‘The old men?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘Anyone who makes a statement is important to the structure. Just some are more important than others.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  She read—

  1st Old Man: I don’t like ma’ table having dust on it.

  2nd Old Man: You dinna like that!

  3rd Old Man: That’s wha’ he said.

  1st Old Man: I know wha’ I said.

  3rd Old Man: It’s not your table that has the dust on it.

  2nd Old Man: You dinna like that!

  3rd Old Man: That’s wha’ he said.

  1st Old Man: I know wha’ I said.

  3rd Old Man: It’s not your table that has the dust on it.

  2nd Old Man: Nor mine, either.

  1st Old Man: Well it’s ma’ dust. That’s for sure.

  2nd Old Man: For twenty years he’s cleaned tha’ table. Let him have his table.

  1st Old Man: Let him get rid of his bloody dust then.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ said Ann, putting down the script. ‘You’ve captured exactly the way old men talk.’

  ‘You haven’t finished it.’

  ‘I want to read it when I’m on my own. I want to take time to read it.’

  She laid it on the surface of his desk and made coffee for the three of them. Secretly she felt it was rubbish. All that talk about dust. She wanted to think it was lovely – she would have done, if he hadn’t been reading it to Pamela on the bed. When they were drinking their coffee he said he was going to get brochures from a travel agency. He thought they should all go to Spain. Pamela rubbed her forehead with her hand as if she had a headache. He and Gus had gone to Barcelona three years ago and the sun would do Pamela good.

  ‘But it’s winter,’ said Ann. ‘It’s winter in Spain.’

  ‘But mild,’ he said. ‘Not like here.’

  When he had gone, Ann sat on the window sill and told Pamela that if she didn’t mind she felt it would be best if she went home, or to stay with George in Clapham. She looked down at the gravel path, at the clump of withered wallflowers by the dust-bins.

  ‘I don’t want to be unkind,’ she said. ‘But it is awkward. The way he includes you, brings you trays to the bed,
wants you to come with us on holiday. We’ve other problems – his wives, for instance.’

  Pamela, surprisingly, knew about that. William had told her when he visited her in the hospital.

  ‘He’s not an ordinary man,’ Pamela said, lying back on the pillow. ‘You don’t want to expect normality from him. He’s an artist, after all.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ann, annoyed that it had occurred to Pamela first. ‘I just don’t want you to come on holiday with us. You do see why, don’t you?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ said Pamela. ‘I didn’t intend to, anyway.’ She started to peel an orange, tugging at it with her teeth.

  ‘Do you think I’m very unkind?’ asked Ann. ‘I’m trying to be honest.’

  The invalid said nothing; juice trickled from her stubborn lips. Later she went down into the hall to make a phone call. She shuffled back up the stairs with her dressing-gown trailing behind her.

  ‘He says I can come tomorrow,’ she said.

  Ann wanted to go in the taxi with her and see her safely to the door. After all, Pamela had lost a lot of blood and was still weak, or pretending to be. She moved wearily about the flat collecting her belongings, the necklace jingling on her pale neck. But she preferred to go alone.

  ‘George wouldn’t care for it,’ she said. ‘He’ll think you’ve come to shout at him.’

  William had said goodbye to her earlier, before going to have lunch with the producer of his play. He didn’t ask why Pamela had decided to move out so suddenly. The brochures he had brought from the travel agency lay on the television set, gaudy with setting suns and Moorish architecture. He shook hands formally with Pamela. He was wearing a black jacket Ann hadn’t seen before, and grey trousers. His tie, which was mauve, looked as if it was made of brushed velvet. The wardrobe in the pink bedroom was bursting with his elegant clothes, his laundered shirts. He said he hoped Pamela would find everything all right in Clapham.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Pamela demurely. ‘You’ve been very kind.’ She wouldn’t, Ann noticed, look William in the eye.

  At four o’clock Ann telephoned George’s house. She had found the number in an address book Pamela had left on the bathroom shelf. A man answered who said his name was Edward. George had left last week for Cornwall.

  ‘I’m Pamela’s cousin,’ said Ann.

  He hadn’t the faintest idea at first who Pamela was. After some prompting he conceded that she might be a girl belonging to George.

  ‘With fair hair?’ he said.

  ‘No, she’s dark.’

  ‘Face like a Victorian doll,’ he said. ‘Is that the one?’

  But he hadn’t seen her recently. Nor had anyone called at the house that afternoon. He’d have known anyway, because George had taken the bolt off the front door before he left.

  Ann was late for her period. She knew the reason for it, but she didn’t want to admit it. Lately she wasn’t sure she knew how to take care of herself, let alone a child. She had bad dreams about William leaving on ships and aeroplanes, standing at rails and on gang-planks, waving, with a shadowy woman at his side.

  ‘It could be,’ she told William, ‘that I’m run down. Lack of sleep, worry over Pamela, that sort of thing.’

  She had read somewhere that, in the concentration camps, the women had stopped menstruating through lack of food.

  ‘Rubbish,’ said William. ‘You’re pregnant.’

  He seemed pleased, and yet he never mentioned marriage. She would have liked to contact Pamela to discuss symptoms and things with her, but she didn’t dare admit to William that Pamela had never arrived in Clapham. Nor did she want to phone Brighton to see if she was at home. What would she say if Aunt Bea said she understood Pamela was staying with her?

  William insisted on taking her to a surgery he knew. Only when they were in the waiting room did he tell her this particular doctor took care of Edna and Sheila and the children. The doctor made William stay outside while he questioned her. William didn’t want to go; he would have sat quite proudly at her side and held her hand.

  She lay clammily under the cotton sheet, her face pink and aloof. The doctor had gold cuff-links and a gold tie pin. He wore rubber gloves as if he were going to do the washing-up, and he smelled of talcum powder. He said it was far too early to tell. He made a slight examination of her and explained he didn’t want to probe too much as he presumed she wanted the baby, and at this stage it was as well to leave things alone.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I want it.’

  She would have liked to ask him how long he had known William and Edna and Sheila. Did he think William intended to marry her? But there was hardly the opportunity. She was relieved not to be told she was definitely pregnant.

  William wanted to go out and buy a pram at John Barnes. Ann said there was nowhere to put it and they ought to wait at least till her condition was confirmed. In the hall downstairs, there was already installed an enormous wardrobe with brass handles, belonging to William. Roddy had asked twice for its removal, but William said he would shift it when Mrs Kershaw objected, not before. When he was out Ann tiptoed downstairs and looked inside. There were suits and jackets, an overcoat of dark blue, a new silk dressing-gown. Polished shoes, brown and black, and suede boots stood in rows held in shape with blocks of wood. Beneath was a long drawer, locked. She wondered if it was the wardrobe he had sat in with Gus. There was a smell of cigars and cinnamon trapped within its dark recesses. She reached with inquisitive fingers into the pocket of the blue overcoat and withdrew them, running upstairs disgusted at her curiosity.

  William spun fantasies about the child they were going to have. It was bound to be a girl. They would call it Catherine. When Ann grew bigger, he would massage her stomach with olive oil to stop her skin from stretching. ‘Baby-maker’ he called her, turning her this way and that in the bed, and sometimes hurting her.

  She received a second letter from Gerald. The friends with the cabin in the mountains knew of an apartment outside the campus. It was only two rooms but it would do to start with.

  ‘What’s it mean?’ she asked William. ‘Why doesn’t he mention my letter?’

  ‘He can’t face up to it,’ William said. ‘There’s some people made like that.’ He put the letter into a drawer of his desk and told her to forget about it.

  She could tell now when William wanted to see Edna. He became restless and unable to concentrate on the television. ‘Have you got to go out?’ Ann would say, wanting to help him. ‘You can, you know. I don’t mind.’ He would hug her, rub his hands over her still flat stomach and tell her she was a great girl, his girl. She was lonely without him. Having left her job at the BBC, she saw no one but him. She had tried to keep in touch with Olive, but she couldn’t go out to meet her, for fear of missing time with William, and she didn’t want to ask Olive to the flat; Olive was round and busty, and men liked her on sight.

  Mrs Kershaw came up twice, but only to see William – once about a valve in her tyre and another time about something personal. She didn’t say what it was.

  ‘How’s the pottery?’ asked Ann.

  ‘Bloody awful,’ said Mrs Kershaw.

  A week later Pamela telephoned to say she had rented a room overlooking Regents Park. She hadn’t found it comfortable in Clapham. George had been elusive.

  ‘Pamela,’ said Ann. ‘I’ve missed a period. What should I feel?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, what symptoms should I have?’

  ‘Have your breasts gone hard?’ said Pamela after a pause.

  ‘Not really,’ said Ann. Pamela knew she hadn’t any breasts worth speaking of.

  ‘Do you feel sick?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does your tummy feel swollen?’

  It was no use. Ann hadn’t any swellings. Nor had she an appetite.

  ‘Perhaps it’s all right,’ said Pamela. ‘Perhaps it’s imagination.’

  Dutifully, Ann asked her to supper. Pamela refused. Reluctantly she gave her phone num
ber and promised she would keep in touch and pop round when she felt more sociable. She was taking stock of herself, the life she had led. ‘I’ve been a fool,’ she said.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Ann said seriously. ‘There are always people who live differently from others – who live more dangerously. Somebody has to lead.’

  There was a slight pause.

  After a moment Pamela said, ‘That’s rubbish. Everybody’s doing the same thing. You’re not leading anybody. You’re following.’

  It wasn’t what Ann wanted to hear. If she was having an illegitimate child, she needed to be unique; she couldn’t possibly be following a trend.

  Pamela said she was about to take a job as a dental receptionist. A friend of a friend knew someone who needed one.

  ‘That’s useful,’ said Ann. ‘If I am pregnant, I’ll come to you.’ She knew the importance of caring for the teeth when bearing a child. ‘Mummy lost all hers when she had me,’ she told Pamela.

  ‘All of them. Why?’

  ‘Septicaemia of the blood. She had every one extracted two weeks before I was born.’

  ‘No wonder she doesn’t like you,’ said Pamela.

  William’s play was to tour the provinces in January – Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow. He would accompany the cast some of the time. Bearing in mind that he had said they must never be parted, even for a day, Ann looked forward to the travelling. She had never been up north.

  ‘Will your parents like me?’ she asked. She had a picture in her head of Mr McClusky in his General’s uniform, outside the tenements, his trumpet to his lips. ‘Will they understand about Edna?’

  ‘They’ve never met Edna,’ he admitted. ‘I never got round to telling them I’d split up with Sheila. But I’ll take you to a football match. I’ll take you to Hampden Park – after Christmas, my beauty.’

  It was something she had been trying to push out of her mind. She knew she would have to go home to Brighton; she had always gone home for Christmas. Mrs Walton would never put up with her refusing to come. She might even arrive at the flat to bear her away forcibly. Hesitantly she told William that she couldn’t get out of it.