Beryl Bainbridge

by Brendan King

  At night the lights never go out in the studios and sometimes a panio plays, and there are occassional outbursts of talking. Beyond the studios are three long lawns side by side in front of three tall crumbling yellow houses . . . Each house is divided into numerous flats like the one I live in and each window leval assumes a quality all its own. There are broken window boxes and tiny balconeys and none of the windows are curtained. There is a white haired man who lies always on his bed and a girl above who sits by the window, rolling grey clay between her hands, and a young man to the right on the balconey who sits and watches the sky and listens to the wireless and who smiles so gently at the clay girl . . .

  When it rains the gardens are all empty, the windows become misty and indistinct, and the yellow houses stain a brighter lemon. In the middle garden there is a stone statue, a face and neck. Its eyes are stone and grey and we stare back at one another silently across the city lonliness, till the rain brings slow tears down the grey cheeks.4

  This, along with other pieces she was writing around the same time, became part of a collection that Beryl later entitled ‘Fragments 1951–53’.5 Unable to afford a proper notebook to write in, she utilized the same technique she had in the past, pasting blank sheets of paper onto the pages of an already printed volume, in this case a 1947 copy of Points of Contact, a large-format, illustrated collection of journalism. In a letter to Austin sent shortly after her arrival, Beryl mentioned that she was writing, and as he felt that artistic expression was vital to one’s development as an individual, he tried to encourage her: ‘You talked about starting a book – do you mean you are writing one – if so I think it’s an excellent idea. It would be a good idea to write short stories and send them to a publisher as pot-boilers, you write so very beautifully that I am sure you could succeed. I should love to read a book written by your hand, for your letters give so much pleasure and the words flow smooth and kindly.’6

  His comments were intended to be constructive, but he had an unintentional knack of saying the wrong thing. His reference to pot-boilers seems to betray a sense that he didn’t take her writing seriously, and his closing comment, ‘Do not eat too much, I would not like you to grow fat’, was hardly the most sensitive thing to say to someone as obsessively concerned about her appearance as Beryl.

  Not surprisingly, given the circumstances of her departure and her present situation, Beryl was prone to bouts of loneliness and depression. Her attempts to find work didn’t help: visits to theatrical agents sometimes produced offers – but it was work at a price. As Austin noted in his journal: ‘Apparently she visits a theatrical agent nearly every morning to ask for a job, they take her particulars and tell her to return on a particular date when they announce with solemnity that they have a job for her and before going to take it she can stay the weekend at such and such an address. There is no doubt as to the meaning of such a suggestion, thus she gets no job . . . it must be very depressing.’7

  Even though he was staying only ten minutes away in Cranley Gardens, Ken could do little to alleviate her loneliness, his days now being occupied with rehearsals for the Mobile Theatre’s Strindberg production. Although he’d long wanted to get Beryl away from Austin and have her to himself, he was frustratingly committed to going on tour: he was due to leave London in March and wouldn’t be back for months.

  Two weeks after Beryl moved to London, Austin wrote asking whether he could stay with her for a couple of days, framing it as a work, rather than a personal, visit: ‘I am coming to London perhaps, on the bus Wednesday night, to do some research in the V & A Museum . . . Would you, and could you let me stay with you? You might have changed your mind since I last saw you – having received no letter it may be that you have decided never to see me or write to me again.’8

  After this unemotional, matter-of-fact request, signed simply ‘Austin’ with no final term of endearment or expression of affection, he seems to have given way to a sudden burst of emotion and the rest of the page is filled with an outpouring of feeling: ‘I cannot write just that, there is so much more I would write if it was not that I am afraid – afraid to know what I think – afraid to believe in the eternal or lasting things – everything to me is as temporal as the passing of the day or the dissapearing of a cloud . . .’

  There followed a confused rationale of his past behaviour towards her, a mixture of justification and self-recrimination, which, in its attempt to express things he’d long been mulling over in his mind but that weren’t easily expressible in such a brief space, Beryl would have made little sense of, though the final paragraph made it clear he felt he was to blame: ‘I am guilty – guilty – guilty of not knowing what everyone should know, myself. Every day your photograph looks at me and says, “You . . . are . . . guilty the fault is yours – yours is the weakness, the immaturity, the abject fear – COWARD!!!!!!!! you have committed something that is far worse than murder.”’9

  Whether it was this reopening of old wounds that led to a renewed bout of anxiety, or whether she simply caught a chill in her draughty bedsit, Beryl fell ill almost immediately afterwards. A concerned Winnie came down to London to look after her, and Austin was forced to postpone his visit until the following week.

  Dorothy Green, who clearly saw a link between Beryl’s illness and her unhappiness over Austin, wrote advising her to break all contact with him: ‘My dearest girl I am sorry you have been so worried about Austin – you know I really do feel the only thing to help you is not to see him or write to him and ask him not to write to you – you know it is quite impossible for you to get over this feeling for him, if you continue to see or write to him . . . if you want me to I will always send the news and let you know how he is and what he is doing.’10

  When Lyn heard the news she, too, dashed off a distraught letter of enquiry: ‘Bash darling my dearest, I’ve just met Austin and he’s told me you’re ill, sweetie dearest, I’m frantic, whatever’s the matter – and he told me your allowance hasn’t come off, what’s the true position – let me know please, this is no time to be proud, you know I’ll do anything I possibly can do to help you, please tell me truly how things are, you know I love you and nothing would make me happier than to be able to do something.’11 She gave Beryl the number of her current boyfriend, Charles Robinson, who ran a confectionery shop ten miles away in South Woodford, and told her to ring him in case of an emergency

  In need of Lyn’s advice – and wanting some news about Austin – Beryl wrote back and asked her what she thought his motive for visiting her was and whether the rumour that he was now seeing one of Lyn’s fellow students at the Art School, Anne Lindholm, was true. (By one of those curious coincidences that would strain the credibility of a work of fiction, Anne Lindholm would later become Beryl’s editor at Duckworth, having married the future publisher Colin Haycraft in 1956.) Lyn did her best to calm her and reason out the situation: ‘Lovie, how do I know why Austin’s coming down – at a rough guess, which is all I can make, he wants to work and he wants to see you. You know if you’ve been like you and Aus have been, everything doesn’t just go bang! (This is the way the world ends . . .) and you still like a person tremendously and genuinely want to see them and talk to them. This is all I can possibly say.’12 As for Anne, Lyn assured her that she and Austin weren’t ‘going round’ together.

  Austin’s journal for 1952 shows that his reason for coming to London wasn’t entirely work-oriented: ‘Next week I am going to London to study silver and gold work at the V & A for a few days . . . Beryl has promised to put me up! I was to go early this week but she wrote to say that for one her mother would still be there, and also that her period was beginning, so it should be all-clear by Thursday night of next week. It will be good to sleep with her after so long.’13

  His account of his visit reveals at once how complex, not to say contradictory, his feelings were. Although he concedes that his relationship with Beryl offered a peace he could not find elsewhere, his determination to put art above personal happi
ness remained implacable. The issue of how fair it was to Beryl to string her along and prolong the sexual side of the relationship despite being conscious that he didn’t want to commit himself to her, seems not to have entered his mind. He was more concerned about the dilemmas facing him as an artist:

  I stayed with Beryl in London three days and two nights, travelling by bus overnight. I was very tired and fatigued when I arrived and had to rest all morning, before setting out with Beryl to the V & A museum. When I arrived she looked so attractive when she opened the door, with a pinny over her skirt and her hair tied on top of her head in a bun making it appear that she was taller, that I realised, not for the first time, how very beautiful was the structure of her face, and I knew then how much I had missed Beryl in Liverpool . . .

  When we lay together that night, tired, quiet and peaceful it seemed to me that it was possible that we could live so together in complete coordination. It seemed to me that to struggle and slave as I had been doing was unnecessary, it seemed that all the pain, the tearing of ones very sinews trying to achieve an elusive infinite goal, was a waste of life and living.

  And yet I knew that ‘It must be so’ there was no question of choice or happiness, what I must do is to paint and draw, to continue to create, and create things that would live after and beyond me to achieve something in my life. But there is no question of choice. I cannot stop, I cannot relax, I must exhaust myself, must squeeze every ounce of energy out of this body of mine . . .

  Into all this where does Beryl fit? Is there room for such things, is it not better for me to be alone, to work alone, or would Beryl be an asset to my work or a hindrance? It would become a major tragedy if it turned out that she were to collide with my work – the risk is too difficult yet to even consider. One day I shall know but that day may be too late, she may be gone.

  In London we walked about during the day looking at people and exhibitions and spent our two evenings alone in her little room, talking about our futures and where it was leading us, how long it would take and what the satisfaction, then we lay together in her bed feeling that ultimate fulfilment existed here, in lying together in the closest proximity, feeling that here at last is where our struggles, our pains, pass away and complete peace and quiet exists.

  Coming away from London in the bus I was dozing and woke suddenly to see an illuminated sign flash past, the words were ‘THIS IS THE END.’ Strange is life.14

  In a letter to Beryl explaining why he had to finish with her, Austin compared what he was doing to what she’d done to Ken – with this difference, that when Beryl told Ken there couldn’t be a relationship between them she did so knowing she was in love with someone else, whereas he had pushed Beryl away despite his feelings for her, in order to spare her further unhappiness: ‘I was driven by an inner force to do that which was unnatural for the sake of tomorrow’s happiness, tomorrow’s sake. I cannot now be happy for I have achieved nothing, thus I would make anybody closely connected to me intensely unhappy . . . I must first achieve that state of self-respect and wisdom that I now lack.’15

  If Beryl was perplexed at these abstract equivocations, her confusion would only have been compounded by Austin’s next letter a few days later, which opened with the words, ‘It was like a dream to be with you in London.’ His letter was almost certainly prompted by Beryl’s question to him about why he had come to see her if he wanted to end the relationship. Again his response seemed to be inconsistent with his decision to break with her: ‘Why did I come? I felt an emptiness, a hollowness which could only be alleviated by your presence, I felt a lack which only you could provide for. I think it will always be so!’16 The rest of his letter was filled with mundane news about his work and general bits of news. It didn’t sound like a man committed to continuing a relationship.

  With Austin back in Liverpool, Beryl set about finding a job, organizing herself, as she would for the rest of her life, by making lists of things she had to do, such as writing to Willard Stoker at the Playhouse to see whether he could recommend her for any jobs; picking up some socks and a skirt she’d left at Ken’s in Cranley Gardens; answering Dorothy’s concerned letter about her health; getting a door key cut for the flat; writing to the Pitlochry theatre festival; and sending her mother a box of chocolates as a thank-you present for looking after her.

  The following day she planned to write letters to a variety of prospective employers: to Robert Digby, the director of Colchester Theatre, to Guildford Theatre, and to the New Boltons Theatre Club in Kensington. However, it was the final task of the day that produced the most immediate results. Film-going had always been one of Beryl’s pleasures, and at some point during her first weeks in London she met Robert Lawson, a film buff interested in foreign cinema who, like so many others, would fall in love with her only to be disappointed by her inability to requite it. With a view to finding her some part-time work as an usherette, Robert introduced her to one of the managers of a cinema on Tottenham Court Road, who in turn arranged an appointment on 13 March to see Mr Martin, at the Berkeley Cinema. In her diary she jotted down what to say at the interview: ‘Ask for intro to Mr Rive, say Mr Colman sent me.’

  Kenneth Rive was a well-known figure in film circles. Having started out as a projectionist, he now ran two cinemas in Tottenham Court Road, the Continentale and the Gala Berkeley, and was considered ‘a leading influence in the development of post-war arthouse cinema’.17 Beryl’s meeting with him was successful and the following week she started as an usherette:

  I am going to work in a cinema, flashing a torch. I do it nine hours a day, in a fawn overall, and in the interval I sell icecreams, plain and chocolate. I feel happy then because it is half dark and no one can see my face is ugly with not knowing, and I say: ‘Sixpence Sir, have you got any less I am short of change.’ My coat is green, dark green, and I have red shoes on. Every morning I sew myself into my black dress, because it is too tight over my breasts, which makes me feel full and womanly.18

  But there were other things on her mind besides her new job and Austin’s ambivalence. The period she was expecting at the end of March didn’t start, and despite the fact they had been irregular for months, she feared the worst and wrote a panicky letter to Lyn telling her she thought she was pregnant. Lyn tried to calm her, though even Beryl felt her attempt to make light of the matter went too far:

  My dear Miss Bainbridge, re yours of the 5th inst I am so happy for you darling, if you are too that is . . . Now of course, being presented with the facts of the other, it is absolutely absurd to suppose that you are enceinte . . . If it doesn’t come within the next two days, go and see a doctor . . . I would be the first – no the second, person to get into a sweating flap if I really thought there was any possibility whatsoever, so take my advice and stop worrying, that’s probably half your trouble – but if it makes you happy I’ll write and tell Charles to sharpen up his old knitting needles . . .19

  For the next few weeks Lyn would write making a series of comic allusions to Beryl’s state, referring to ‘Baby Austin’,20 and jokily telling her not to mess up their plan to meet in London or she would ‘withdraw my offers as baby-sitter’.21 However, Beryl’s condition seems to have been just another bout of amenorrhoea, and by mid-April Lyn’s references to pregnancy and babies ceased.22

  At the end of March, Austin received the news that he was a runner-up in the Topham Trophy competition – the £8 prize money meant he could now afford to buy some clothes and some painting materials. But his elation didn’t last long. The same day a parcel arrived from Beryl, along with a sealed letter that she told him he wasn’t to open. Ignoring her injunction, he read it straight away and was shocked by its contents:

  On Tuesday night I rang you up at the Greens at about 10 minutes past midnight but I couldn’t get an answer. Perhaps it is just as well, I wouldn’t know how to say it.

  Coming out of the cinema Tuesday evening a man spoke to me and seemed so charming and kind. He was about 40 with such a beautifull
y modulated voice, and small white hands. I went for a coffee with him, and then we caught the bus and went into a little pub in Brompton for some cider. I hadn’t had anything to eat since Monday, so I expect it made me a little hazy.

  We went back to his flat and when he opened the door of his room it had a small red lamp and no other light, and he turned the wireless full on. And he locked the door, Aus, and I heard the key turn behind me, and still I wasn’t afraid. And like a fool I started my foolish creed . . . about talking things out of people, telling him he had a beautiful face and how lonely he must feel. And when he kissed me, I actually was surprised believe me, because it didn’t fit in. And it began, the fear. And he knocked me down and I screamed and he tore my clothes off and hit me in the eye with his elbow, and jammed his knee into my mouth. And still I thought I could talk him out of it. I said all about people believing they got near through bodies and it wasn’t true, and I could feel the wimpering futility of it all, because he didn’t understand one word.

  I shouted and shouted and he told me to carry on as no one could hear . . . He kept crooning at me that he was going to look after me for always and how much he wanted me to love him. He kept repeating over and over again, ‘I’m not a liar darling, I’ve never been a liar.’ I told him I did love him, I’d never leave him, but he just sprawled on me, trying to push it in. And finally he hit me again near the mouth and did get it in, but I pushed my knee up, and he cried out, and it went soft like a white worm.

  I thought he was going to kill me, because he just lay on his side shaking and staring at me. So I said ‘I do want you terribly but I must go to the lavatory first.’ Finally he said he’d get me a basin, and he walked out of the door presumably into the kitchen. I grabbed my mac and reached the second landing and he flung the basin at me, and I slipped and the darkness was all broken up, and the thud of his body all over me and I screamed and screamed, and then I nearly went mad because I felt water falling down my thighs and I thought it was his urine. He pushed me into the room and tried to sooth me, but I just hit him, so he gave me my clothes and I pushed them into my pocket, but he wouldn’t let me pass till I’d got calmer.