by Ted Lewis
“I—but why me? It should be you that he tries to get his own back on.”
“You’re a fool. He knows—he knows that I still love you. Terribly. Oh, Vic.”
She began to cry.
“Listen. Janet. I—Oh hell, I love you. I do. You know it.”
“I thought you did. Now it’s all over. It can’t be the way it was.”
“It can, it can. Listen to me. We can start again. We do love each other. It’s senseless causing each other this pain. I must see you. I’ll come across tomorrow.”
“No, I’m seeing Chris tomorrow.”
“What? How can you? We love each other.”
“I know. It doesn’t make any difference.”
“Why? Why doesn’t it?”
“I don’t trust you anymore.”
“You don’t trust me? Here I am stuck over here and you’re out every night of the week and you don’t trust me?”
“I don’t trust you because of what happened!” she screamed. “You lied, you lied, you lied and you told everyone about us and you don’t love me. It’s just pride.”
“I do love you. I—”
“No, no, don’t.”
“I want to—”
The line went dead.
“I hope you’re lucky soon, Victor,” said Gillian Lewis. “I’m sure that’s all it is, luck. Your share should be here any minute.”
Gillian was changing her display of antiques in the shop window. I was sitting on a Regency straight-backed chair, watching her.
“Luck,” I said. “I’ve had more than enough of that recently.”
“Now, Victor, be adult about it. Don’t put your foolish actions down to bad luck. It’s not good for your moral fibre.”
“Bad luck helped.”
“It couldn’t have helped if you hadn’t caused anything for it to help.” She turned away from the window and brushed a curl away from her forehead. “Could it?”
“You’re right, I suppose. It doesn’t help a great deal though. To recognize the reasons, I mean.”
“It will in the long run. That’s the important thing.”
“It doesn’t seem like it right now. I really do wish I was dead.”
“On average, people do two things a year throughout their lives which make them say ‘I wish I was dead’. Wait until you’re my age with the effects of all the times you’ve said it showing on your face.”
“I suppose so.”
She offered me a cigarette.
“Janet knows her own mind, you know, Victor. She’s not a girl who changes easily. She feels things deeply. Right now she’s confused. She has to find a way of dealing with things for herself. You were good for her. You showed her a lot. But when she’s had more experience, when she can see things more clearly, I don’t think her feelings will have changed. You know what I mean.”
“And right now?”
“You know as well as I do.”
“But it’s—”
“—so painful. I know.”
November.
The phone rang.
“I had to call,” she said.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I’m missing you.”
“I know. Vic, I want so much to see you. I’m sorry for being so stupid.”
“It was my fault.”
“No. I couldn’t see.”
“When? When can I see you?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes. Have you—changed?”
“No. I couldn’t. I tried.”
“I haven’t changed either.”
The grey wind bustled across the damp car-deck. I watched the pier grow bigger and its details become clearer in the wet dinnertime light. I looked down at myself, to see if there was any last-minute smoothing of my clothes to be done. My nervousness guided my hand to a smudge of cigarette ash on the lapel of my coat. The ferry banged against the pontoon. The paddles stopped turning and the sound of the water chopping up and down between the boat and the pier broke loudly into the swishing of the wind. The ferryman swung back the iron gates in the side of the ferry. Two others, standing on the pontoon, began to lower the gangway, its chains rattling in the fitful wind. The passengers strolled forward. I fastened my coat and walked off the boat.
Janet was waiting by the ticket barrier. Her hair was blown across her face. She pushed it back with her hand. She smiled, nervously. I walked toward her. She held her hands against the side of her head to stop her hair flashing across her face again. I stood in front of her. We looked at each other.
“You look as good as ever,” I said.
She didn’t say anything. She dropped her hands to her sides and looked at the pavement.
“Vic. I—” She couldn’t finish what she was going to say. I stepped forward and put my arms round her. She didn’t look at me.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “There’s no reason to cry. No reason at all. You’re with me. That’s all that matters.”
“I know, I know. It’s—it’s just—”
“Don’t worry. There’s nothing to worry about. We’re all right now.”
We sat side by side at a table in the White Horse. Seeing her again was enough to blot out temporarily any doubt or jealousy which might have been in me.
“It hasn’t meant anything, you know,” she said. “The boys I’ve been out with; they just kept making me think how much I wanted them to be you. I thought they would help me to get over you, but it was just the opposite.”
“Thank God. I was so frightened you’d meet someone you liked.”
“That would be impossible.”
“I—you didn’t let anyone—anyone touch you? If—”
She squeezed my hand.
“Of course not. Not after you. I couldn’t. You’ve been the only one.”
“I’m sorry,” said Janet. “God, I didn’t want it to happen. I still love you, I think, but—I don’t know.”
The screen’s reflections brushed softly against our faces. The usherette chewed her torch way down in the front of the deserted balcony.
“You can’t love me,” I said. “Not anymore. Not if what you say is true.”
“I can’t help it. I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel the same anymore. When you touch me, I can’t seem to give myself properly. Something seems to hold me back. There’s not the same—the same excitement, the same thrill. It’s as though any passion we show is forced. Not natural anymore.”
She bit her lip and looked away from me.
“It’s bound to be like that at first. We’ve had a hard time,” I said, but I understood what she was feeling. The fact that she had been out with someone else stopped me from being the way I wanted to be with her.
“I know, I tell myself that. But you feel it, don’t you, and you know what I mean? It’s awful, so awful, when I think of how we were.”
“But we can be like that again.”
“No. It’s as though the part which made it so wonderful has suddenly gone bad, and we’re left with just the appearances, the motions, rather than feeling it spontaneously and properly, how we used to.”
“Then—what I asked at dinnertime—if anyone had touched you—have you let anyone?”
She didn’t answer.
“Have you?”
“Well, you made it happen, Victor,” she said, suddenly angry and tearful. “I had to do something. I have to go on living.”
Oh, Christ almighty.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
Janet pressed her face into my chest.
“Oh, Vic. Oh, why did it happen?”
I didn’t answer because I knew why.
“Then what do you want to do. Finish it?”
<
br /> “I have to. For now. It’s not that I don’t love you. Can’t you see why?”
“No. Not the way we’ve been.”
“I can’t help it.”
On the screen men were fighting each other.
“I’ve always been honest with you. You always said that I must be honest with you. I can’t explain it.”
I reached out to touch her cheek.
“Please. Please, no, don’t do that. Can’t you see that’s useless?”
Laughter and joy rose up from the front rows of the stalls as an actor was knocked down. A trolley bus went by out in the street, its sound and rattle muffled by the damp outside and the warmth within. A man sitting lower down the circle woke up, looked round and got up to leave. The usherette didn’t move.
The flames of the bonfire tore into the dark night sky, crackling and flailing impulsively about in the keen wind, sparks sprinting away on the fast air currents.
The long fields fell away down toward the river into the dark beyond the fire. Fireworks exploded erratically accompanied by the delighted noises of young boys, their voices ebbing and flowing on the wind.
I was standing next to the trestle table where some of the Young Cons girls were dishing out hot peas and cartons of tea. The rest of them were standing about in groups round the fire together with the Young Cons young men. A firework exploded underneath the table, the dispensing girls squealed, and a young lad raced off toward the fire, out of harm’s way, laughing triumphantly.
A girl in a duster by me said:
“Oh, by the way, I saw Joanna today. In Swaby high street.”
“Really. And what was she doing?” asked another girl.
Picking her nose, I thought. What do you think? I turned away to the table and asked for some tea. I was served by a girl called Monica. I’d been very friendly with her at school and after but nothing more. She was a nice girl and clever but set in her ways so that though she liked good books and good films and advocated that people should behave as they liked and found bohemianism attractive, she would never do anything unusual herself. It was safer just to enjoy talking about it. She was two years older than me. I wondered when she would be getting married. She was about due.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” she said.
“I’m not surprised to see you,” I said.
She laughed.
“What else is there to do here?” she said. “This is one of the year’s highlights.”
“You could get stoned in the Coach and Horses bar. No, it does surprise me, really. Your fraternizing with the enemy. What happened to all the stuff about the left-wing intellectual female and her place in society that you used to be on about when you came home from college?”
“Well, I only go to the Young Cons because there’s hardly any other social life round here,” she said.
“That’s what they all say,” I said. “It was just a phase, all that nonsense about D. H. Lawrence and nationalizing birth control or whatever you used to go on about.”
“Shut up and give me a cigarette.” She came round to my side of the table adjusting her headscarf more securely over her pale blonde hair. “I’m too cold to argue with you tonight. Let’s go and stand nearer the fire.”
We strolled closer.
“How’s your current girlfriend? Or girlfriends?” she asked.
“All right.”
“What about that one you said was so marvellous? Janet, was it? What happened to her?”
“Nothing. You know.”
She smiled, part in exasperation, part in triumph at her being right.
“That’s typical of you,” she said. “Really typical. One minute protesting how marvellous a girl is, the next ‘nothing’. You are funny, Victor.”
“A barrel of laughs.”
“I don’t think anyone will ever catch you,” she said. “You’re too much concerned with yourself. You never rise above your surface.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Shall I undress or will you?”
“See what I mean?”
“Monica, how would you like to come and have a drink with me? Now, I mean?”
“A drink? But I’m supposed to be helping with the refreshments. Anyway, I don’t know that I want a drink.”
“You’re not helping much at the moment. Besides, I’m serious. How about it?” I said.
“But, well honestly, this is so unusual.”
“Come and penetrate the surface. It’s only possible when I’m canned. You’d be fascinated.”
“I’m sure. One long sex adventure after another.”
“That’s what I mean. You’d be fascinated. Come on. This is the first time you’ve ever been for a drink with me in all the years we’ve know each other. Alone, I mean. Why not?”
“You are stupid. I don’t know.”
“Are you in your car?”
“Yes.”
“Come on. We’re all set. It’ll make that change you’re always moaning about.”
“All right. All right, why not?” she said. “I might even get myself talked about.”
We walked up the slope of the field and passed the refreshment table. Some nosy heads turned toward us. Monica pretended she hadn’t seen them, but I smiled at them so that whoever caught my eye had to smile back.
We reached the car. Monica went round the far side and got in and reached over and unlocked my door. I looked back down the fields toward the fire. Not one of them could touch her, I thought. Not one of the bloody bitches. And they don’t know that they can’t. They all think they’re so marvellous, but they couldn’t get anywhere near her. Nowhere near.
“One big pint of beer and one vodka and lime right on schedule.”
I put the drinks on the table and sat down opposite Monica. She smiled at me, happy with the drinks she had inside her. We were in the quiet lounge of a quiet pub in a quiet village ten miles up the river from home. We had been sitting there for an hour-and-a-half. Monica had been doing most of the talking in the last half-hour.
“I’ve never known you to be so quiet,” she said. “The idea of coming was to probe the surface. You usually have so much to say for yourself.”
“Too much, as a rule.”
“Tell me, do you think you’ll ever be able to love someone besides yourself?”
Oh hell, I thought, she’s feeling the vodka that much.
“No,” I said, to keep her happy.
“Why not?”
“Because nobody could ever take my place in my estimation of myself.”
“You’re awful. You’re so conceited.”
“I know. I think I’m marvellous.”
“Terrible.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are,” she said. “Even though you are smiling.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. You can tell. Still, it seems to work on the girls you take out.”
“I’d never try it on you. You’re too intelligent.”
“I’d never go out with you,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because of the way you are,” she said.
“Don’t you find me attractive?”
“No.”
“Yes, you do.”
“You’re not my type. Gosh, you are conceited. But I like you.”
She smiled.
“I know,” I said. “Have you ever been to bed with anyone?”
The smile remained but she reddened a little.
“What makes you ask that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Yes, I do. But I’m not going to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not.”
“Why not?”
She le
ant forward across the table, still smiling, flushed with the drink and the unusual conversation.
“I’d be embarrassed,” I said. “Besides, it’s my business.”
“You embarrassed? Oh, Victor.”
“I would. You’d understand if you knew.”
“Well, tell me then.”
“No. You answer my question first.”
“No.”
“Then you have been to bed with someone.”
“No, I haven’t.” She went redder and redder.
“Yes,” I said. “Or else you would have denied it.”
She leant back in her chair and looked down at her lap, her face serious and scarlet. Then her hand went up to her face, her palm covering her nose and her mouth. She snorted with laughter at my finding out, embarrassed laughter and also a little satisfied with the fact of my knowledge and then again slightly proud laughter, proud that she was found out to be a woman.
“Well,” I said. “How about that. How about it.”
She sat up in her chair pretending she was trying not to grin. She shook her head so that her hair flicked back from her face. She straightened her jeans over the sides of her thighs and looked me in the eyes.
“And now you know, what of it? I’m not ashamed of it.”
“Why should you be? I’m just a bit surprised, that’s all.”
“Well, I should hope you would be. I wouldn’t like to think that people thought I was easy.”
“And are you?”
“No.”
“How many times?”
“Twice.” She was smiling even more proudly.
“How many?”
“Three.”
“Same person?”
“No, two.”
“Boyfriends?”
“One was. Twice with a boyfriend, that is,” she said. “The other time was after a dance.”
“You’re very frank. Surprisingly.”
“It doesn’t make any difference now you know.”
Her face suddenly stopped smiling. “You won’t—.”
“No, I won’t,” I smiled.
“Because I’d die if anyone was to find out. You know what the town is like.”
“I shan’t say anything.”
She took a drink.
“Why did you want to know?” she asked. “You’ve got to tell me now. It’s only fair.”