Birthday

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘I know that after you left me,’ she said, ‘you married Pauline Bates, and when you came out of the air force you left her and your little boy, and went off to France.’

  He began the winding descent to Ambergate, knowing it hadn’t been like that. Pauline had told him to go, and he went. She had been seeing someone else while he was abroad, but to explain would sound like dodging whatever responsibility had been his.

  ‘I met her one day while I was shopping, and she told me about it. Things don’t often work, do they?’

  ‘No use going into whose fault it was.’ They went under the train bridge and on to Ambergate junction, the Hurt Arms Hotel facing the road like a sentinel, as it had done for more than a century. A furniture centre and a Little Chef on the opposite corner were recent additions. There was more traffic on the trunk route to Matlock, a road in the old days empty except for the odd army lorry.

  ‘I didn’t hear any more of you,’ she said, ‘till we met at the station when I was going to visit George in Sheffield. And when I called on your mother she told me you were working for television.’

  The grey stonewalls of Derbyshire gave a homely air, woods beyond Whatstandwell sleeving the road. He was reluctant to ask, in case she thought him wanting to tear her heart out and hold it up to the light: ‘When we split up all those years ago, how long was it before you forgot me?’

  ‘I had other things to think about. We were just kids, weren’t we?’

  He was glad the question hadn’t disturbed her, as a similar one wouldn’t have bothered him. ‘Yes, but you were the first woman I had, and I did think about you now and again,’ which was no lie, otherwise why was he driving her to Matlock?

  ‘I’ve had lots of time to think,’ she said, ‘about how it might have worked for us but didn’t.’

  Traffic lights held them on red before the turning into Cromford. ‘We’ll have lunch at a pub here. They serve a good meal.’ He parked by the kerb, and held her arm across a road in heavy use by gravel lorries.

  ‘Is it a long way?’ She took his hand as in the old days. ‘I can’t walk far.’

  ‘It’s just up this narrow street.’

  ‘My legs feel like columns of lead. Maybe I should have them chopped off, then I wouldn’t have to drag them everywhere. Even if I’d wanted to run away from George I wouldn’t have got very far on legs like these.’

  ‘You got a long way from me, though, didn’t you?’ Banter had always been used, either to find out what each other truly wanted, or what they actually meant to say. Sometimes it was used to irritate, at other times to amuse. More often than not if served its purpose, though not sufficiently to keep them together so many years ago.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but you didn’t chase me very far. When I said I wouldn’t want to see you again you didn’t even argue. I don’t think I knew my mind. I did want to see you again. I cried myself to sleep that night.’

  ‘I’ve never been one to do the right thing at the right time, either then or since.’ Hardly an apology, but he hoped she picked up his enduring regret.

  ‘Nor me, if it comes to that.’ He held the door of the low eighteenth-century Boat Inn and followed her into the long ceilinged room with its beams and plain tables, an untended juke box facing the bar, and a few books arranged on the window sills. She took in everything with hardly a glance, he noticed. ‘I suppose if we had done what you call the right thing we’d never have met up again like this, with you taking me out,’ she said. ‘I feel a real old fogey sometimes, but at others I don’t feel a day over eighteen, especially – and I’ve got to say it – now that George has gone.’ They laid their coats along a spare seat. ‘It’s nice and warm in here.’

  Former girlfriends had found it quaint and picturesque. The place never changed. ‘I’ll go for the drinks, while you look at the menu.’

  ‘What are you having?’

  ‘A tomato juice: I’m driving.’

  ‘Get me a gin and tonic, then. It’s like being on holiday.’

  A rugged farmer of the region standing at the bar remarked in a friendly voice that the weather wasn’t much to write home about. ‘But you and your wife will be all right in here.’

  Brian wanted to say she wasn’t his wife and never would have been. ‘Yes, it’s a snug place, right enough.’

  He took the drinks back. ‘Your tomato juice looks cold,’ she said. ‘You haven’t even got Worcester in it.’

  ‘That bloke at the bar thought you were my daughter.’

  ‘A likely story.’

  ‘Well, what are you going to have to eat?’

  ‘Roast beef and all the trimmings.’

  ‘Me too.’ The young woman who took their orders had pale and pleasing features, a slender figure, and though not for him he recalled, while following her progress back to the bar, that a virgin was put into King David’s bed to hold him back from dying.

  ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘I’ve seen her before. Knock that back, and I’ll get you another.’

  ‘Are you plying me with alcohol?’

  ‘I wouldn’t get far with a couple of those.’

  ‘I don’t want to do anything foolish.’

  Maybe she had when she first got pregnant. ‘I can’t see that happening.’

  ‘Nor me,’ she laughed. ‘Whatever I did that was daft in my life didn’t need drink to make me do it. Perhaps if I had been drunk I wouldn’t have been so stupid.’

  ‘That goes for us all.’

  ‘You never know why you do anything, but when you’ve done it you’re stuck. I often wish I could turn the clock back.’

  ‘After I left you,’ he said, ‘I got married to Pauline because she was pregnant. A shotgun wedding, though no one needed to point the barrel at me.’

  ‘The one who got me pregnant ran away.’

  ‘It might have been worse if he’d stayed behind.’

  ‘I loved him enough for it not to matter. But you did the right thing by Pauline.’

  ‘And look where it got me. Maybe I should have bolted as well. It wouldn’t have been any worse for either of us.’

  ‘You did right, because if you’d got me pregnant we would have stayed together. And what would have happened then?’

  ‘Who can tell?’

  ‘You can imagine, though. You can dream. I wouldn’t have married George, would I? You and me might still be married.’

  As far into sincerity as he’d ever strayed, he was nevertheless glad to see the large platters set before them. ‘It’s possible.’

  She unwrapped the cutlery from its paper napkin. ‘I like to think so.’

  ‘And so do I.’

  ‘Rain always makes me hungry, and I love Yorkshire pudding.’ She took a bit of this and a scoop of that, but such a laden platter dulled his appetite. He established a bridgehead, and reduced the greens, the peas and carrots, the roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, and occasional reinforcement of the meat as if on a military campaign.

  ‘I like eating something I don’t have to cook.’ She gazed along the opposite line of tables. ‘I dreamed a lot during all those years caring for George.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘One thing and another.’

  ‘That’s not saying much.’

  ‘It’s harder to remember day dreams than night dreams. They helped me to keep going, and while I was dreaming I just wasn’t there. I was somewhere else. I would dream that George wasn’t George, that he had two legs and was somebody else, and could walk wherever he liked. After we bumped into each other on the station platform I dreamed that George wasn’t George, and that the somebody he was was you. The best thing that ever happened to me was that I met you before getting on that train.’

  ‘I can see how hard things were.’

  ‘You can’t. Nobody can, though I could never say so. I can now it’s all over, but I couldn’t at the time. You can never complain. People don’t want to hear, and you can’t blame them, because neither do I.’

&nbs
p; He would never see such a smile again, brought on by understanding her more than he ever had or that anyone ever could, a smile meant for him alone, which came as lightning burrowing into his flesh for evermore.

  He leaned across to wipe the tears on her cheeks with the fresh handkerchief always in his lapel pocket. She deserved a place in the Official History of the World, an impossible paragraph to write since too many would be competing for space.

  Her distress burned into him, to put out the tears before they could flow from his eyes, a connection he had no option but to allow, even if he was destroyed as he deserved. Her generous and friendly smile was shaped by long endurance, was offered to what in him was able to receive it, telling him that he couldn’t have stayed long with a person of such quality, would have been no more use to her than George, an emotional rather than an actual cripple, who would have released her sooner because at least he had legs. ‘You did more than was expected.’

  ‘Your mother was nice to me when I went to see her. She laid out a good tea while I talked my heart out. I didn’t call often, because I couldn’t always get somebody to sit with George, but it was good to get rid of what was on my mind. It was the pressure of having to care for him every minute of the day and night, so I had to talk about it, though maybe I didn’t think there was all that much pressure at the time.’

  ‘What sort of dessert would you like?’ He picked up the menu card. ‘There’s hot apple pie and custard. Then we can have a cup of coffee.’

  ‘I don’t think I could eat a pudding. Well, maybe I will,’ as if it was a novelty to have a decision made for her. ‘I can’t let you eat on your own.’

  When the waitress brought his coffee, and one with milk for her, she said: ‘I don’t know how you can drink it black, and with no sugar.’

  ‘The dessert sweetened it.’

  ‘Is it to keep thin?’

  ‘I don’t need to.’

  ‘I can see that. But I’ve got a sweet tooth.’

  ‘You don’t get fat, either,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s because of our early years in the factories. When we’ve done we’ll have a look around Matlock Bath.’

  ‘It might bring back memories,’ she said lightly. ‘We came on the train. And you said you didn’t remember!’

  ‘I do now. I took you rowing on the river.’

  ‘You nearly got us caught in the weir.’

  ‘I wanted to give you some excitement. I also remember when I came on the bike, and you were so tired I left you in Ripley. I’ve never liked that place since.’

  ‘You can’t blame Ripley. I wasn’t well. I was having my period.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘You might have guessed. Anyway, I didn’t want to spoil it for you. On the way home I had an icecream in Eastwood. I went to bed with a hot-water bottle in the afternoon because my back ached.’

  He wondered why they’d waited so long to talk openly. They used to chat like two monkeys, yet conveyed nothing important. He held up her coat, as he always did. An odour of rain on the cloth reminded him of former days. ‘That was cheap,’ she said, as he paid the bill.

  To spend more at the best hotel might have been as exotic an experience to her as the Boat Inn was for his girlfriend from London, though her remark only meant what it said, no troubling reverberations. He saw how relaxed life would have been with her, instead of the eternal confrontations with other women. After a few years, however, she might have turned just as vitriolic, out of self-preservation – though decades of George’s bad temper hadn’t crushed her.

  He parked by the parade of cafés, and shops selling the eternal fishing tackle, and souvenirs for trippers, technicolored gewgaws for the mantelshelf, or the scrapheap soon enough.

  ‘Byron thought this place was as beautiful as anywhere in Switzerland,’ he said, seeing her gaze at the wooded cliffs.

  ‘I’ve never been there, so I wouldn’t know. I suppose you have, though?’

  ‘A couple of times. Ruskin said the valley was ruined by too many trippers.’

  ‘People have got to have somewhere to go. And there aren’t many here at the moment.’

  ‘Things are dosed up until spring, so I can’t take you on the river.’

  ‘It’s too cold for that,’ she said. ‘You can do it another time.’

  He couldn’t think when that would be, there being little more to know about her, or that he could know about her, wondering what the connection was between them, as if they’d lived too long, and should stop being curious about what they had done in the misty days of long ago. They had been through too much to need the disturbance, yet he couldn’t avoid an inexplicable fondness for his first love, and for himself as he might have been, as if bringing her on the jaunt had turned him back into a feckless youth.

  A coat pocket warmed her hand, his damp from closing the car door as they left the main road and walked a cobbled track towards the Heights of Abraham. ‘You get a wonderful view from there,’ the gradient no trouble for him, taking her arm as if to help her. ‘And there’s a café at the top.’

  ‘I can’t make it.’ She stopped. ‘Well, I could by tomorrow morning.’ Mist moved between the houses, plumes of coal smoke bending from the chimneys. ‘It’s starting to rain, and I’ve left my umbrella in the car. You go up, and I’ll wait by the road.’

  All of life’s anguish had taught him that she was too old a friend to be abandoned a second time and in the rain. ‘There’s a comfortable place in the town where we can have a pot of tea.’

  ‘I do feel good,’ she said, when he had ordered from the waitress. ‘And being with you makes it even better.’

  ‘Do you ever think of the future?’

  ‘Why should I?’ She poured his tea.

  ‘I don’t know if you don’t know. I thought everybody did from time to time.’

  ‘I go on living, so what do I want to think about the future for?’

  ‘Don’t you dream of doing something now that you’re free?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by free. But I’ll never get married again, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘I didn’t think you was asking me,’ she laughed. ‘You mean like going on a world cruise? I wouldn’t want to even if I could afford it. I’ve got enough to live on, and there’s my family to think about.’

  ‘I met a few at the party. And Ronald and Sylvia were at Avril’s funeral.’

  ‘Yes, Ronald didn’t like the way you looked at Sylvia.’

  ‘I thought she was interesting.’

  ‘I’m only joking. He said what a nice chap you were, and how different he would have been if we’d had him. But my family keeps me up to the mark, so what more do I want?’

  Hard to imagine. The comfort and security of helping the species along had never been part of his purpose, plenty of others to take care of that, and any good people the world couldn’t do without would soon be replaced.

  She drank her tea halfway down the cup. ‘Yes, I’ve been lucky with my family.’

  ‘You weren’t with George.’

  ‘No, but it balances out. I used to wonder if it did, but I see now that it does.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve never talked to anyone like this before.’

  ‘You used to call on my mother.’

  ‘It wasn’t the same.’

  ‘It’s because I’m asking you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t answer if I didn’t want to.’

  She wasn’t telling anything he couldn’t already know, but he needed to find out what had kept her going with George, what were her thoughts after tucking him into his special bed at night and she was on her own in the dark, what had been in her mind when, with his cripple’s petulance, he had struck her as quick as a cobra across the face on her leaning down with a weary tenderness to see to him. He wanted to get to those sacred springs and learn more about her noble qualities because she had been his first love. By himself he could only put together clues, never sure how close he was to
understanding.

  By knowing his brothers as well as he knew himself, by listening to their families and friends, by all he heard from people in the pubs, by using the packed experience of his childhood and youth – because wherever he had lived and however much he had changed – he still belonged with them and could therefore understand Jenny without the need to rake her soul over the coals of past suffering. First love had put him in sympathy with everything to do with her, because they had been through a courtship that was still accessible to both.

  If Pauline or Jane had been crushed in a motor accident would he have spent his life looking after them? Such sacrifice would hardly have been expected. After the shock habit took over and you lived from day to day, crushed with pity, life changing until accustomed to the routine of living without hope.

  In a restaurant he always placed the woman so that she could see on to the street, then he would watch her features as she observed whoever went by. He smiled on knowing she was about to say:

  ‘A penny for your thoughts.’

  ‘I haven’t got any.’

  She looked towards the window, as if a friend might look in and see her with her first love. ‘That’s what you always said.’

  ‘Was it? All right, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘You said that, as well, after I said “That’s what you always say.” I can’t believe it.’

  ‘I told you people don’t change. But I was thinking about you. Who else, on such a day?’

  ‘You’ve got to tell me, then.’

  ‘I was wondering how much I really knew you.’

  ‘And how much do you think you do?’

  He had nothing to lose by lying, but how much of a lie it would turn out to be he would never know. ‘More than anyone else. And you know me more than anybody else you know.’

  ‘I think you’re daft. I don’t think there’s all that much to know about me.’ She stopped her amusement from turning into a laugh. ‘Somebody with more thought in their head wouldn’t have done what I did. In any case I’m not hard to know, so you wouldn’t be claiming much.’