Sweet William

by Beryl Bainbridge

  She didn’t know his University address, so she sent it to his old employers, the architects’ firm in Kensington. She asked them to forward it.

  She waited daily for a reply, but none came.

  The wardrobe still blocked out the light in the hall – the mahogany folk-singing chamber with the brass handles. She tried to look inside but someone had locked the doors. Somebody, Roddy possibly, had written in chalk across the front. ‘Move this bloody monstrosity’. When she passed it to go shopping, she touched the grained wood fleetingly with her hand.

  One morning, descending the green carpeted stairs in her dressing-gown, she saw the cream perambulator parked in the hall. There was a single cut flower, a hot-house rose, on the waterproof cover. She ran down the last flight of steps. She rummaged inside the hood for a note, a message. There was nothing. She knocked at Mrs Kershaw’s door. Roddy answered. He held a newspaper in front of his naked body.

  ‘Is Mrs Kershaw in?’ she asked, ignoring his smooth chest, his hairy legs.

  ‘No’, he said rudely, slamming the door in her face.

  She took the rose upstairs and cried over it. She prised the petals apart, searching for a sign.

  Mrs Kershaw came upstairs at midday. She had found an envelope jammed in the flap of the letter box.

  ‘It’s from him,’ said Ann. ‘I know it.’

  ‘You’ll have to do something about that bloody pram,’ said Mrs Kershaw. ‘Roddy’s livid.’

  The note said, ‘Please for the love of God, let me back. I want to be with you and my bairn.’

  ‘Don’t fall for that,’ said Mrs Kershaw violently. ‘He’ll only upset you.’

  She strode about the living room in her sandals and her cotton blouse. She wore her short hair curled like a gypsy, and hoops of brass in her ears.

  ‘Of course I won’t,’ said Ann. She wished Mrs Kershaw would go away so that she could read the few lines he had written, over and over.

  He knocked at her door at two o’clock in the morning. Ann had changed the locks and his key wouldn’t fit. He stood like a bashful boy, penitent, hanging his head.

  ‘I’ll not bother you,’ he said, mock modest. ‘Unless you want me back.’

  She was so happy she forgot Mrs Kershaw’s advice, her own good sense. She nestled into his arms. She took him in without a word of reproach. Back went the bundles of socks into the wardrobe, the collection of shirts.

  He was a reformed character. If the telephone rang, he took her by the hand and went down with her into the hall. He forced her to hear his conversations, the appointments, the invitations to lunch and dinner. He showed her the letters he received. He was never late home. Neither of them mentioned Edna or Pamela. She told him she had written to Gerald.

  ‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘I canna blame you. It’s natural enough.’ His eyes, it seemed, had become a deeper shade of blue, full of candour and friendliness.

  ‘What did you mean?’ she asked. ‘About the cat?’

  ‘What cat?’

  ‘The cat you talked about that dreadful night we were in Crewe.’

  ‘Is that how you remember it?’ he said, hurt. ‘Was it dreadful to you?’

  She felt ashamed. She was constantly letting him down. It had been the following night, of course, that had been so painful.

  He asked Chuck von Schreiber for supper. He was tall, with a moustache, and he brought Ann a box of chocolates. She didn’t like him. He looked at William as if they shared secrets. He wore a silver ring on his little finger. He put his arm about William’s shoulders frequently. He never lost an opportunity to touch him, brush against him in some way, hand or knee, as he told an anecdote about an outing in Newcastle … Liverpool …

  ‘Ah, Chuck,’ said William. ‘Leave it be.’

  ‘What’s he doing here?’ Ann snapped, slapping the dishes into the sink, making the coffee. ‘Why doesn’t he go home to America?’

  ‘He’s my mate,’ said William. ‘He’s not as important as you. But he counts. Don’t misunderstand that. He does count.’

  ‘Well, he can count right out of here,’ she said in a fury. ‘Get him out of here.’

  She made coffee. She poured it out. She was quite amusing about her experiences at the BBC. William sang. Chuck joined in. Ann put her finger beneath her ear, as she had seen on television, and attempted to harmonise.

  ‘Jesus,’ said William. ‘You’re tone deaf, Ann.’

  She fell silent. She sulked. She went into the bedroom and left them together. Her voice wasn’t that bad; as a junior she had been in the school choir.

  There was laughter from the sitting room – movement. William came into the bedroom. She pretended to be asleep. He took things from the wardrobe. Later she heard him go downstairs with Chuck. She thought they were saying goodnight. She peeped out of the window, but the hedge hid the car from view. She waited for William’s footsteps on the stair. He never came back. She was sorry then she had been so rude to his friend, so critical. She leant against the wardrobe, empty of his shirts and socks and cried. She cried on and off for several days.

  ‘But what did you say?’ asked Mrs Kershaw, mystified.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ann. ‘I was a bit nasty to Chuck.’

  ‘Well, what did William say, then?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ann. ‘Except that I was tone deaf.’

  Ann pushed the pram out onto the gravel and left it by the bins. She hoped someone would steal it. The next day it was back in the hall.

  Gerald replied to her letter.

  I find it very difficult to understand. I have heard nothing from you. You did not reply to my letters. Imagine my distress when your letter came this morning. I have told everyone about you. I will come back to England in June to see you. This will be expensive but I feel it is worth it. I think we should get married. I don’t care about the baby. I am shocked that such a thing should have happened so soon after I left. However I reckon we can both overcome this obstacle if we are sensible. I have sent 300 dollars to your bank on the Finchley Road. Keep your pecker up. Gerald.

  ‘What on earth will my bank manager think?’ she asked Mrs Kershaw. ‘All those men sending me money.’ And she laughed and stood vulgarly with her stomach thrust forward, her face round with health.

  ‘I thought you said Gerald was cautious,’ said Mrs Kershaw. ‘It’s bloody noble of him wanting to marry you.’

  Ann rang Edna and told her of the latest developments – William leaving, Gerald’s offer of marriage. Edna said she hadn’t seen William for several days, though he had sent his shirts through the post for her to wash.

  ‘I’d burn them,’ Ann said boldly.

  But later, in the night, in the early morning, when she could swear she heard a nightingale singing in the trees beyond her window, she wept.

  William came back, once in April and twice in May. On each occasion his arrival was dramatic and unannounced. In April, he broke into the flat when she was out shopping, splintering the jamb of the door and causing Roddy to send him a solicitor’s letter. He was doing the washing up when she returned. He said for his own sake she must take him back. The second time he said it was for the sake of the child. Lastly, for Ann’s sake. His clothing went in and out of her wardrobe. The pictures of Dennis Law and Samuel Palmer were never replaced on their hooks upon the wall; they stood stacked against the skirting board, ready for a quick getaway. It was the abrupt removal of the more mundane socks and handkerchiefs that caused her the most despair. Their disappearance never failed to break her heart into pieces.

  In May, when he had come back with flowers in his hand and a folding bath for the baby, he left after a discussion about Catherine.

  ‘I want Catherine to have liberty,’ he said. ‘I want her to be free.’

  ‘Catherine who?’ she asked, baffled.

  ‘My daughter,’ he said. ‘I want her to be happy.’

  ‘She’ll go to University,’ Ann said. ‘She’ll ask questions, she’ll know about things … about pe
ople … about painters.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ he cried. ‘Just as long as she holds her head tall and her shoulders back.’

  He was saying that she, Ann, was round-shouldered. Her eyes smarted in the darkness.

  ‘Pff,’ she said scornfully. ‘I don’t care what she looks like. It’s her brain that counts.’

  ‘You’re daft,’ he said. ‘Who wants a woman for her brains?’

  ‘Gerald would,’ she retorted. ‘He’s not prejudiced.’

  Up jumped William from the bed. He went to the wardrobe, lifted out the coat hangers hung with suits, stuffed his socks into a carrier bag and leaped out onto the landing and down the stairs. She heard the sound of his plimsolls on the gravel path. His departures usually coincided with some letter or telegram arrived earlier in the day. She was not actually surprised, only devastated.

  She tried to ring Edna, but she was either away or not answering her phone. If she had known how to contact Sheila, she would have done. She felt his wives and herself were citizens of some special country. They knew about the frontiers, the treaties. Anybody else would boggle at the absurdity of the customs, the complexities of the language.

  Each day, the postman brought parcels addressed to Miss Catherine McClusky – items of clothing, a shawl, even a teddy bear. The vests and the booties and the little pink frocks waited where once William had stored his handkerchiefs. She could hardly bear to touch the small trousseau. She didn’t want to think about the birth. She felt it could never happen, or if it did, it would happen to someone else. When Gerald comes, she promised herself, then I’ll think about the baby. Her doctor said; she was a healthy young woman – heart, urine, blood pressure, everything normal. Not my heart, she thought. Surely my heart’s not normal.

  At the beginning of June she looked at herself in Mrs Kershaw’s full-length mirror. It was very noticeable from the side, her condition, but she wasn’t too bulky at the front.

  ‘It won’t go away,’ said Mrs Kershaw. ‘Just by looking at it.’

  ‘Is it very obvious?’

  ‘Very,’ said Mrs Kershaw.

  ‘William sent me a new dress,’ said Ann. ‘A pregnancy dress to get married in. It’s green, with little flowers.’

  ‘He thinks of everything,’ remarked Mrs Kershaw drily.

  Two days before she expected him, Gerald cabled Ann. She puzzled over it. PERHAPS IT IS FOR BEST. HOPE HE LOOKS AFTER YOU. GERALD.

  She read it several times before taking it to show Mrs Kershaw. The French windows were open and the children ran about the garden.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Are you sure it’s from him?’ said Mrs Kershaw. ‘Maybe it’s a trick. Maybe William sent it.’

  They looked carefully at the despatching address and the date. It seemed genuine.

  ‘Does it mean he’s not coming?’ said Ann.

  ‘Did he have a sense of humour?’ asked Mrs Kershaw.

  ‘No,’ Ann said.

  Jasper came in wanting bread and jam. He ignored Ann. Mrs Kershaw cut a slice from a brown wholemeal loaf. She had been gardening and dirt rimmed her nails.

  ‘But why should he change his mind?’ asked Ann.

  ‘Why can’t we have decent bread?’ complained Jasper. He threw his sandwich on the floor.

  ‘Pick that up,’ commanded Mrs Kershaw.

  ‘I don’t want butter, only jam.’

  ‘It sounds as if someone’s changed it for him,’ said Mrs Kershaw.

  She cut more bread and told Jasper to go outside. He wouldn’t.

  ‘How am I going to manage?’ asked Ann pathetically. She still thought of herself as frail and skinny. Tubby and cumbersome, she lumbered about the room, feet splayed outwards to balance her weight. Jasper prodded her stomach.

  ‘Don’t’, reproved his mother. ‘You’ll hurt the baby.’

  ‘Silly,’ said Jasper. ‘It’s in a bag of jelly. It can’t feel anything.’

  He swung backwards and forwards against the handles of the French windows. The hinges creaked.

  ‘Perhaps William will come back again,’ said Ann. She wondered if he was still bothered by free fall. Or had he found another branch to cling to? She said, ‘My mother’s coming next week.’

  ‘You didn’t ask her to come up for the wedding?’ Mrs Kershaw was shocked.

  ‘I never asked her to come at all,’ said Ann. ‘She doesn’t know about Gerald. Do you think you could come up sometimes and talk to her – flatter her—’

  ‘How?’ asked Mrs Kershaw dubiously. She was struggling at the window with Jasper, trying to push him out into the garden.

  ‘Tell her she looks pretty. She’ll like that.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Kershaw evasively, ‘I’ll talk to her.’

  Jasper stamped on her foot. She hit him over the head. He ran screaming onto the grass and hurled his jam sandwich into the rose bushes.

  Mrs Walton arrived, gay and summery, in a white coat and white gloves. She wore a hat made of navy straw, shaped like a basin, crammed with cloth roses. She laughed all the way up the stairs.

  ‘What a lovely hat,’ called Ann, waiting for her on the landing. Being short-sighted, her mother, at this distance, would not notice the change in her shape. Even in the hallway she seemed not to be aware of Ann’s increase in size. Having put her suitcase in the bedroom and taken off her hat and coat, she came through into the kitchen. She was very controlled, very subtle. She said Ann looked well.

  ‘Is that all?’ asked Ann. She had developed a certain irony of manner as her body puffed out, her time grew near.

  Her mother sat at the table. She helped herself to a chocolate digestive. Her eyes were moist and wary. She took a tissue out of her handbag and wiped the tear from her eye, the crumbs from her mouth. She was brave and practical. She asked, ‘What are you going to do?’

  Ann wondered who had prepared her for the shock. Maybe Mrs Kershaw had written to warn her, in case she had a heart attack on the spot. Perhaps she had done all her raging at home.

  ‘Do?’ she said.

  ‘Do,’ repeated her mother.

  ‘Get on with it,’ said Ann. ‘It’s too late to do anything else.’ She took a biscuit.

  Voice beginning to rise in pitch, her mother said, ‘His wife should be told.’

  ‘She has been,’ Ann said. ‘She thinks William’s a beautiful person.’

  ‘Shooting’s too good for him,’ said her mother shrilly. It was as if she’d promised herself, or someone else, that she would not shout recriminations at Ann and was now relieved that there were others on whom she could vent her feelings. ‘We must go to a solicitor. There should be financial arrangements. He mustn’t be allowed to get off scot free.’

  ‘There are financial arrangements,’ said Ann. ‘He puts money in the bank. So does Gerald for that matter. He says he’s coming to marry me.’

  ‘Marry you? Gerald?’

  ‘Well, there’s been some sort of delay. But he did send me money.’

  ‘You do surprise me,’ said her mother. ‘I can’t say I took to him. Too dark … a touch of the Jew, if you ask me.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Ann. ‘He’s Celtic. He comes from Devon.’

  Curiously, her mother wanted to know what she felt for William – not how it had happened or where he went to school, nothing about the General, but did they like the same things, share the same interests?

  ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ said Ann. ‘It hurts.’

  She couldn’t talk to her mother about love. She suspected in any case that her mother’s mood might evaporate fairly soon, and then she would regret her confidences. It was strange that she had been so scathing about Gerald. He hadn’t been married twice or put Ann in the family way.

  ‘When is it due?’ asked her mother.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ann. ‘He was coming last week.’

  Her mother became alarmed. ‘Last week?’

  Ann realised she meant the baby. ‘Next mon
th,’ she said. ‘The pram’s in the hall.’

  ‘What about a layette for the poor little thing?’

  ‘There’s masses of clothes in the wardrobe,’ said Ann. She didn’t think of the baby as a poor little thing. It would be bouncing and deceitful, with a head of yellow curls. Her mother would have a job trying to straighten the little blob of a nose.

  Mrs Walton was oohing and aahing in the bedroom. She shouted, ‘Some of these little frocks are perfectly sweet. Where did you buy them?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ called Ann. ‘He did. Or probably his wife.’

  She was secretly astonished at the way her mother was behaving. Not one word yet of reproach. Not once had she called her a foolish girl. For her own part, she wasn’t frightened of her any more. Even if she did start labelling her slut, prostitute, gold-digger, she didn’t think it would affect her greatly. After all, she thought, we are both mothers now. More or less.

  Mrs Walton tried hard to remain tolerant. She didn’t ask for cups of tea to be brought to her. She slept in the double bed, but she gave Ann one of her pillows to supplement those on the divan. She even cooked little meals for her. She did the shopping. Considering she had left behind her bridge parties and her Wine Society, she was very patient. Ann wouldn’t go out. Only into the back garden. Her mother didn’t know, but it was because Ann didn’t want William to see them together. If he happened to glimpse them in the street, linking arms, he would think she was being looked after and he would never come back.

  Her mother walked her round the badminton court and admired Mrs Kershaw’s roses. She saw Jasper playing with a black boy on the grass.

  ‘Doesn’t he have any normal little friends?’ she asked, laughing gaily in the direction of the children, fluttering her white glove in greeting.

  She had several long chats with Mrs Kershaw, when Ann was resting in the bedroom. Sometimes she was irritable afterwards. She tossed her head viciously remarking, ‘My word, times have changed. She admitted that person came to live here with her consent.’

  ‘She’s a good friend to me,’ said Ann.

  Mrs Walton couldn’t deny it. She couldn’t afford to be critical. How dreadful if Mrs Kershaw, on moral grounds, had turned Ann out into the street and she had been forced to go home to Brighton. In her condition. She said, ‘I’ve never seen her husband. Is she a widow?’