by Stan Barstow
I walk away from him. My heart's pounding and my hands tremble. Violence upsets me. I always hold that it's hardly ever an answer to anything. But by God, there's pleasure in it sometimes. In a minute or two a strange kind of exhilaration seems to take hold of me. I feel that I'm walking tall, my legs and spine stretched, and lightly, on the balls of my feet, my heels not touching the ground. I've got an urge to do something wild. I'd like to smash something, indulge myself in some enormous act of destruction.
Conroy's car is standing in the drive when I get to the house. I halt and look at it. I passed a test once so that I could drive Mr Van Huyten about; but then he stopped going out much and finally sold the car. My licence must still be in order but it's twelve months since I've been behind a wheel. But I'd like to drive like hell down winding country lanes, not caring about bends or other traffic; just hurling the car on through the night. To somewhere...
I try the door. It's locked. I go into the house and up the stairs to bed, thinking it's perhaps just as well.
20
So now I'm going home to hurt a good woman who loves me. I shall put the knife in and watch it stab her to the heart. But a swift clean wound that will heal. Not the steadily festering sore that would be our life together from now on. This is for me and for her as well. Because it's right for both of us in the end and before it's too late. I can turn away her love that wants to keep me now, not knowing what's to come, and see that it'll pass and there'll be a new life, a better life, for her as well as for me. The loneliness will be bad for both of us and it would be easy now for me to settle for the comfort of what I know, and what I know I shall miss. Until she learns to hate me for not being what she wanted and has every right to expect and what she'll find with somebody else if she's lucky.
The obvious thing is the easiest to do. And the one that would keep me popular. What I'm doing is hard. Being a hero in the front circle of the pictures with everybody approving is one thing; the real-life hero with nobody looking on to tell him he's brave is another. And so is doing what you know is right when you're dead certain everybody will think you're a bastard for it.
So do I expect a medal for it? What has what they think got to do with my life? They'll think what they like whatever you do and some might be right and some might be wrong. But they can't know because nobody lives inside your skin but you. Not sometimes now and again, but always, waking and sleeping, twenty-four hours a day, from the day you were born till the day you die. How to mend a fuse, fill up a form, buy a house: that's advice anybody can give and take. How to live your life depends on knowing who you are, and who you hope to be. And it's hard enough to sort out for yourself without bringing somebody else in on the act. In the last resort you're on your own. Nobody knows but you. It's you who makes the decisions and lives with them.
So am I expecting approval for what I'm going to do? Do I send a memo round explaining, so I won't be misjudged? And if I do and manage to get it all down accurately, will they understand then?
Because after all of it I could be wrong. But that's for me to find out, and you can only take one step at a time, doing the right thing as you see it - the right thing for you. Which isn't selfish. It means that having done what's right for you, you're a better person in relation to everybody round you. Except the ones who think you're a bastard and will be hurt for ever because you haven't done the right thing as they see it.
You can't win. But nobody's totting up a score and there aren't any prizes at the end of the line. You just plod on regardless.
You can tell I'm no hero because I think of all these things.
Scene One is the living-room, Saturday night; nearly twenty-four hours have passed by while I waited for the right moment to speak and realized that there is no right moment to say what I have to say; that you've got to make the moment and you badly need the services of one of these drawing-room scriptwriters who'll set it up in one of those scenes where stiff upper lip manages to say in cut-glass accent: 'Felicia, I want you to give me a divorce.' All very cool and calm and civilized, emotions kept firmly under control...
'It's that girl, isn't it?'
'No.'
'You're going with her. Those letters were right all the time.'
'No. I'm not going with her. She's gone away.'
'Where has she gone?'
'Home, to Cornwall. She's ... she's having a baby.'
'Not yours?'
I'm staggered at her calmness, but then I realize it's like the stillness of a coiled spring and I wonder what will press the catch and unleash it.
'No, not mine.'
'Could it have been yours?'
'I haven't seen her for months.'
'That's not what I meant.'
Her control is amazing considering the questions she's asking and the answers I have to give her.
'Yes, then.'
A long shuddering sigh passes through her.
'I knew it. I knew it all the time.'
"Those letters were pure malice, Ingrid.'
'I'm not bothered about the letters now.'
'Ingrid,!...'
I can't get over the way she's taking it, as though it's something she's prepared herself for and is going to see through as bravely as possible. And it's almost to me as though I really love her. I'm nearer to it now than I've ever been since the very beginning. Tenderness even. I want to put my arms round her and comfort her and say, 'Oh, love, love, love. I'm sorry, but it's got to be this way.'
And would that make it any easier for her to take? Perhaps I should make her hate me, so that she'll be glad to see me go. I feel like a priest in the Spanish Inquisition comforting some poor sod they're going to roast alive. 'Ah, my son, my son, the flames will purify you and bring you into the everlasting radiance of God's grace.' 'Stuff God's grace. Let me out of here!'
'There's that money Mr Van Huyten left me ... half of it's yours. You've got your job; you'll be all right.'
Oh, Vic, I don't understand all this. I don't know what you want, what you mean. Why do you want to break things up, all this, nearly four years of marriage? We're all right, aren't we?'
'Yes, we're all right. As all right as thousands of couples, I'd say. And we might go on being all right in the same way. Eventually we'd have kids and we'd squabble and bicker a bit and watch 'em grow up. And then they'd leave us and we'd be on our own, glad of a bit of peace and quiet after it all. And we might grow together and find it's what we've waited all our lives for - or we might find we've nothing to say to each other. D'you think I don't know how warm and cosy it is in here? It's cold outside, but I've got to go out and find what there is there for me. And I'm going to do it while there's till time for both of us.'
'But I've got what I want. I don't want anything else. Oh, I know we fight sometimes and we don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, but it's what I want.'
'You deserve something better. You deserve a chap who'll love you as you ought to be loved, who'll marry you because he wants to spend the rest of his life with you. Really wants to - and nothing and nobody twisting his arm. There's still time for you to find him. It's not too late yet, but it will be. Every year that passes it'll get more and more too late. It'll close in on us and fasten us a bit tighter.'
'Isn't that what all marriages are like?'
The tears are there now, plain to see; and suddenly I'm scared I'll get too sorry for her till I can't do what I have to do.
'It's a sham, 'I shout. 'It's phoney from start to finish. It's got nothing to do with anything that's of any value at all. There's a whole world out there that I know next to nothing about and I want to see it and hear it and taste it. I want to live in it, and I just don't think I can do it with you.'
'But you could have with her?' Ingrid's voice is still quiet, but under it there's all the jealousy in the world and the hate one woman feels for another woman who's touched something of hers.
Yes.' I turn away. All at once I can hardly get the words through my clogged throat. 'Yes, I co
uld have with her.'
'And I suppose you found all this out when she got down on her back and opened her legs for you!'
Here's the venom now, the words spat out, each one a bullet of vicious contempt.
'That had nothing to do with it.'
'I don't believe you. I know you and I don't believe you.'
'It's not a question of not believing. You can't understand.'
'A misunderstood husband. That's original!'
'You can't understand because sex is the only thing you've ever given me that we could share.'
'Oh God. Oh, you rotten bugger. You rotten bugger to say a thing like that to me when she's off carrying another man's baby.'
'Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that.'
'What makes her better than me, except you're the only man I've ever slept with? Is that something to hold against me? How do I compete with a cheap bitch like that? Do I have to go out and find a few more men to sleep with and get a bit of experience?'
Will you keep her out of this? She's gone, I tell you, she's gone.'
'But it's her all the same. Do you think it doesn't hurt to know you've had her? That you've touched me while you've been having her? Well, I'd have forgiven you that...'
'Thank you very much.'
Yes, I'd have forgiven you that. But you cared for her. You cared!'
'And that's what you can't stand?'
'Yes. It's what I can't stand.'
'I believe you'd rather I'd gone with a tart off the streets than had a genuine feeling for another woman.'
'I'd rather you'd killed somebody!'
She spits it at me, eyes scorching my face, before slamming out, leaving me shaken and shocked, shocked to the very core.
I light a cigarette, wondering how I imagined it could end in anything but hate. And I thought that writing a letter was cowardly, that I ought to have it out face to face. Now I know why people who are away just stay away, and those who are here slip off leaving a note. So that there won't be the terrible scars of the knives people ram into each other. No hate to kill all the fondness there's ever been.
I hear the water running in the bathroom and wonder what she's doing. I'm suddenly scared she'll harm herself and I go through and try the door. It's locked. I tap on it.
'Ingrid.'
There's no reply and I say her name again.
What do you want?'
'What are you doing?'
'I'm having a bath.'
'Are you all right?'
'What difference does it make to you?'
Perhaps she's cutting her wrists this very second, I think, all sorts of visions running wild through my mind along with newspaper headlines like 'Jilted wife found dead in bathroom ... Husband admits quarrel... I was leaving her, he said...'
I want to go now, walk out before there's any more of it. But I'm scared. Unreasonably scared stiff. But still scared. And shaken. I finish my cigarette, holding it with a hand that trembles like somebody with palsy. In the morning, I think. We'll talk about it then. Calmer. In the morning.
Scene Two starts with weeping in the night which develops into hysterics in the living-room when I leave the bed and take refuge there in the cold light beside the dead ashes of the fire.
'Don't you walk out when I'm talking to you.'
'I thought you were just crying.'
'I was saying something.'
'I've heard enough. I don't want to hear any more.'
She takes a running kick at me, the hard sole of her slipper catching me a painful clout on the shin.
'You'll bloody listen when I talk.'
'And I'll break your bloody neck if you do that again.'
I rub my shin, thinking how near it all is to farce. All it needs is a slight shift in tone and it would send an audience wild.
She draws herself up in her dressing-gown.
'You can go when you're ready.'
'That wasn't what you were saying before.'
'It's what I'm saying now.'
'Righto, then.'
I go into the bedroom. I've dressed and got my grip packed in less than five minutes.
'I'll write to you about the arrangements.'
'What arrangements?'
'Things'll have to be sorted out, won't they?'
'I don't want anything of yours.'
'Half of it's yours.'
She says nothing. I get my overcoat.
'So long, then.'
'Are you going now?'
'Yes.'
'There aren't any trains running at this time, are there?'
'I'll find something.'
'You can't go to your Christine's, can you?' she says. 'She's heard it before.'
'I should never have come back that time.'
'You should never have married me.'
'I thought I was doing the right thing.'
'You think you are now, don't you?'
'Yes.'
'There's nothing else I can say, then, is there?'
'No, not really. Only, I'd like to think we could part as ... as friends.'
She's standing with her back to me, looking into the cold grey ashes of the fire, but I hear quite clearly what she says.
'I hate you for what you've done to me.'
Scene Three finds me an hour and a half later, dropping from the cab of a lorry at the Ferrybridge roundabout on the A1. The driver leans out and gives me a friendly farewell.
'Hope you get there okay, chum. I'd stand the other side of the roundabout if I were you. There'll be plenty of 'em going south. You'll get fixed up.'
Nice bloke. I think he'd have liked company all the way to Grimsby. I shout good night and thanks as he goes on his way, pulling the big wagon across the intersection.
I feel very much on my own as his tail-lights disappear over the hill and the noise of his engine dies. Quiet. I walk round and stand on the southbound lane, wondering how long it'll be before another Good Samaritan takes pity on me, but not daring to start walking on because that'll take me on to the clearway where they're less likely to stop.
There's a high, almost cloudless sky with plenty of stars and it's quite light when you've been out a bit. But cold.
It's over with. There'll be some music to face from the others later on: my mother and father, Chris, Mrs Roth well ('I always told you so.') and maybe even young Jim. But the deed's done. I'm free. You say something and a matter of hours later it's all over; nearly four years gone.
And God! Oh God! what a terrible thing. I'm thinking of her, small and scared and lonely in that flat and me, small and scared and lonely here. And Donna ... Is it dark and cold in Cornwall as well? Ah, Donna, Donna, I'm standing here on the roadside in the middle of the night. Going where, and to what?
Headlights suddenly rake the sky. I watch them approach and sweep round the big island. I wait for them to hit me and light me up before stepping forward and raising my arm.
Going forward, I'm thinking as I wonder if he'll stop. It's all you can do. Going in fear and trembling, maybe, but forward, knowing the best and hoping against hope that it'll come to you; and just refusing to notice, just simply trying not to acknowledge, how cold and dark it is outside.