I tried to pull away, but George was still holding me. So I pulled harder, I wrenched myself out of his grip, and that’s when I stumbled. I felt myself beginning to fall and I couldn’t stop myself, and all I could see was the black and I didn’t know how far away the ground might be.
It was just a few feet, of course, and I was more shocked than hurt. And there was suddenly light, and there was the landlady, holding a candle, and leaning over the bannister down at us. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Sorry.”
“I did warn you. Please go back to bed.”
She stayed on the stairs so she could light our way. As we passed she didn’t bother to hide her disapproval. “Sorry,” I said again. George didn’t say a word.
George was cross with me that night. I told him about the cold step, but he said he’d felt only carpet, just like on all the other steps, and that I was being stupid.
You asked me for the truth. And this is the truth as I understand it.
George was not a good man, but he was not a bad man either, not entirely. Mrs. Gallagher would say I was justifying again. She said I did a lot of justifying, and I suppose she was right. But I know what’s fair, and I want to be fair to George. I’ve known some bad men. There’s no tenderness to bad men, and George, he could sometimes be tender.
He said what we did wasn’t theft. We’d come into town, and would stay at a little hotel, a bed and breakfast maybe, nothing grand. And then when it was time to move on, we’d sneak away without paying. He said that proper theft would have been if we’d taken the silver with us as we went, but we never did that, George had too much pride. But the idea was there in his head, wasn’t it? He’d spoken it out loud. With George, I knew, if it was in his head, if that little seed of an idea was planted, it was the beginning of everything.
But for the time being it wasn’t theft, not really—we would come to a town, and George would spend the days out looking for work. He’d go to the factories, he’d go to the warehouses. He said that as soon as he got a job he’d return to the bed and breakfasts, every single one, and he’d pay them back. I’m sure at the start he even meant that.
George would come back to the hotels and tell me there was no work to be found—but he’d heard talk of work a few miles away, the next town along, just over the hill, just across the moors, wherever. And off we’d go chasing it. I hated it when we had to move on, but George always looked so much happier, he’d suddenly beam with hope, and that made up for it. He might carry my bags as we walked; he might even sing.
One day we reached the coast. And there was nowhere farther for us to go, not unless we changed direction.
“I could be a fisherman,” George said. “I would enjoy catching fish all day long. Good honest work. It’s all going to work out. You’ll see.” As far as I knew, George hadn’t been inside a boat his whole life, but it was wiser not to say anything.
There were lots of bed and breakfasts to choose from. It was a holiday town, but off-season, everything was empty. I don’t know what brought us to Mrs. Gallagher’s. Fate, I suppose. Who knows why things happen, they just do.
George rang the doorbell, and doffed his hat, and gave that smile he was good at. I did my best to look like the respectable housewife on holiday that I always wanted to be.
Most landladies would ask for a deposit. We had to hand over the deposit without appearing to mind, as if there were plenty more where that came from. Sometimes it was the hardest bit of acting I had to do. Mrs. Gallagher didn’t want a deposit.
“No deposit?” said George. “Well, well.” And he smiled wider, but he also frowned, as if suspecting he was being conned.
“No deposit,” agreed Mrs. Gallagher. “All my guests pay when they leave.”
She told us about the whispering in the box room, but the hotel was empty, we could pick any room we wanted, and I was glad George allowed us a room that wouldn’t scare me. She told us about the strange chill in the breakfast room. She told us about the step you could find only in the dark.
In the morning she served us breakfast. She didn’t mention the night’s disturbance, and nor did we. She asked us how we wanted our eggs. “Fried and runny,” said George. I told her I’d like mine poached. She gave a curt nod, then went into the kitchen.
She brought us out plates of sausage and bacon and fried bread. I had a poached egg. “Where’s my egg?” George demanded to know. Mrs. Gallagher said she had only one egg, and apologized.
George glowered. He managed a few bites of sausage, then pushed his plate away. I knew how hungry he must be, but he had such pride. He lit a cigarette, stared at me through an ever-thickening cloud of smoke. I pretended not to notice. I wanted to eat as much of my breakfast as I could. I hoped that, if I ate fast enough, he wouldn’t say anything until I’d finished.
“You enjoying that?” he said too soon, softly, dangerously softly.
I knew there was no right answer. I looked at him. I tried to keep my expression as neutral as possible.
He took my plate. He held it up, as if to inspect it closely, as if to ensure it was fit enough for his queen. He spat on it. Then he put the plate back down on the table, and ground out his cigarette in the middle of the food, in the middle of the egg.
“I’ll be back later,” he muttered, got up, and left.
I was still so hungry. But I didn’t want to eat from my plate, even though the spit was only my husband’s, and I loved my husband. And I didn’t want to eat from his, in case he came back.
Mrs. Gallagher took away the plates, and if she was surprised they were still heavy with food, she didn’t comment.
I stayed the day in the bedroom.
That evening George came back and he was all smiles. He said maybe he’d found a job after all—a fisherman had said he would take George out on his boat in the morning, try him out for size. He’d brought back a couple of bottles of beer, I don’t know where he’d got them, and he let me have a little bit. When that night he did his business, he was kind and quick.
The next morning he left early. I got to eat my breakfast on my own. It was delicious.
That same night George came back to the hotel angry. The fisherman hadn’t waited for him. It had all been some bloody big joke. I asked him where he’d been all day, and that was a mistake. Later that night he apologized. He said the fisherman had waited for him, he’d gone out in the boat. But the waters had been very rough, and he hadn’t been well. The fisherman found it funny. He supposed it was funny, come to that. I mean, he’d get used to the sea if he had to, but in the meantime, it was funny. Didn’t I think it was funny? It was all right, he said, he didn’t mind if I did, we could laugh at it together, like we used to laugh at things. I gave him a kiss, and that made him feel better.
He said he’d try his luck again. Maybe another fisherman would take him out. Maybe the first fisherman wouldn’t have told all the others. We had breakfast together. Mrs. Gallagher asked how we wanted our eggs. He said he wanted his fried, but runny. I said I’d have mine poached. She brought me a plate of sausage, bacon, and a poached egg. She brought George a plate of fried eggs, and nothing but fried eggs, the yolks all broken and pooling thickly into one another. George stared at the plate, and didn’t say a word.
Mrs. Gallagher asked me my name. I hesitated, and she saw I hesitated—but then I told her my name anyway, the real one, not the one George liked me to use.
“Mine is Nathalie,” she said.
“Natalie?”
“Nathalie. It’s French.” She didn’t look very French. Her arms were big and thick, her face rough like sand; in years to come I’d think that sand must have blown off the beach and got stuck deep in her skin and she hadn’t been able to scrub it out. Not my idea of French at all; George’s mother had shown me some fashion magazine, back in the days we were allowed to visit, and there were French women inside, and Nathalie Gallagher was nothi
ng like them. “You’re in trouble,” Nathalie Gallagher said.
“No, I’m all right.”
“You’re in trouble. I could help you. You could stay here with me. I can run this place alone if I have to do, but I could use an extra pair of hands. I couldn’t pay much, but you’d get bed and board.”
“And George?” I said.
She didn’t say anything to that.
“George wouldn’t like it,” I said. I knew all he wanted to do was get his own job and be able to look after me.
“I had a disappointing husband too,” said Mrs. Gallagher. She told me that her husband had brought her back to England after the war. She didn’t say which war, and I presumed it was the last one, but it was so hard to tell how old she might be. I didn’t like to ask. “He said he had some property, I thought he must be a duke or something. Turned out he owned a hotel. I had to spend my days learning how to make full English breakfasts. Yes, he was a disappointment.”
“Where is your husband?” I asked. “Is he dead?” The words seemed so blunt, I could have bitten my tongue.
Mrs. Gallagher didn’t seem offended though. Indeed, she gave my question some thought. “No, I don’t think so,” she said at last. “He’s probably still alive.”
I kept the job offer in my head, turned it over and gave it a good prod whenever things were bad. Things were bad a lot that week. I thought I would tell George when he was in a good mood, maybe he’d see the value in it, even if it were just short term, even if it could just tide us over awhile and give us some sort of home—but George was never in a good mood, there was no work out there, and the mood just got worse and worse, so I decided I’d just have to tell him quickly and get it over with and trust to luck.
He didn’t shout, that was good. He turned from me, and lit a cigarette, and stared out of the window down upon the cliffs and the sea, as if in deep thought, as if giving it actual consideration.
“It’s time we left,” he said.
“So soon?”
“There’s nothing for us here. We’ll go tonight.”
We packed our stuff, waited until it was dark. Past midnight I said to George that we should get going, but he shook his head impatiently, it wasn’t time yet, he had a feeling for these things. We sat there on the bed, side by side, in silence, and George listened for noise. At last he took my hand, and squeezed it, and that was the signal, and I think it was done in affection too.
It was pitch black. George carried the bags, he told me to walk ahead of him. I clung to the bannister rail. I counted the steps downwards, one, two, three, four, and at five the staircase curled around toward the final descent to the front door. Now, we both knew about the extra step that was waiting down there, and neither of us mentioned it, and I dare say we’d both factored it into our calculations, sixteen stops until we reached the bottom. But now I was in the dark I thought of it only with dread—and I mean that, a hard, heavy dread—I didn’t want my feet to touch that step—I didn’t want any part of my body to come into contact with something so cold and so inexplicable—and here I was, inching farther toward it, another step down, then another, then another, as if I were falling somehow, as if I were falling and there was no way to climb back up, I couldn’t change my mind, I couldn’t turn around, my husband was behind me blocking my way and he would never let me free. And another step, and another—and I wondered if I’d miscounted already, were there two steps to go, or three? Three before . . . ? I didn’t want to reach that step but I didn’t want to get past it either—and it sounds silly but it suddenly seemed to me that step was a dividing line between all of my sorry past and all the future before me—and if I got past the step, then that was it, the future waiting there in the darkness was just more of the same, just more of the same. Two steps. One. I had miscounted, but there was no delaying it now, that step in front of me had to be the extra one. And then there was light from up above, and the darkness was spoiled, so there was no extra step at all, and the relief I felt was so overwhelming that it took me a moment to realize we must have been discovered.
The candle didn’t give much light, but it was enough. Mrs. Gallagher stared down at us.
George said, “We’re leaving. We don’t want any trouble.”
Mrs. Gallagher said nothing.
George said, “We’re not going to give you any trouble. We’ll just leave, and be on our way.”
Still nothing.
He said, “When I get a job, I’ll come back. I’ll pay you then. I’m not thieving.”
Mrs. Gallagher said, “Just go. But don’t you ever come back.”
“Well then,” said George. “Well! Then I won’t. You bet I won’t.” And he actually grinned at her, and doffed his hat.
I wanted to say I was sorry. I couldn’t find the words, as easy as they were. I tried to smile at her, something, but she didn’t look at me, not the whole while. That’s what hurt.
George opened the front door, and we stepped out into the wind, the night, our future together.
I thought maybe he wouldn’t come looking, maybe he just wouldn’t care, and would let me be. I thought maybe he might even be relieved, one less mouth to feed, I wouldn’t slow him down anymore. But still I’d keep checking behind me as I walked on, still I’d keep off the main roads, hide sometimes in bushes—because whether he wanted me or not, of course he’d come looking. He had his pride. That’s all he had.
I didn’t even know which direction I was headed in. And so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I reached the coast, but I was. I thought we’d travelled so much farther than that, that the coast was weeks behind us. But there it was, the cliffs at my back, the sea in front, and I trudged my way along the beach squashed between the pair of them.
I certainly hadn’t expected to find Mrs. Gallagher again. If I had looked for her house I’m sure I wouldn’t have found it. But I gazed up, and there it was ahead of me, it was the only place in miles that seemed to give off any light, maybe, I fancied, the only place in the world.
I knocked at the door.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“You’re in trouble,” said Mrs. Gallagher. And at last I understood what she meant. Because I was in trouble, and I hadn’t quite dared believe it until then—but of course I’ve known, that’s why I’d run away, wasn’t it? Because it was all right, my being trapped with George for the rest of my life. Maybe that’s all I deserved. But not my child. Not my child. Never.
“You’d better come in,” Mrs. Gallagher said.
I arrived just before the holiday season, and there was a lot to learn.
I learned how to make beds, not in the ordinary way, but in the hotel way.
I learned how to clean a room quickly, so that you could give the impression everything was spick and span on the surface, and not draw attention to the real dirt underneath.
I learned how to make a proper cooked English breakfast. I got quite good at them, but Mrs. Gallagher was always better, so she stayed in charge of the kitchen. “My husband taught me, said he cooked the best fry-ups in Yorkshire,” she said. “His only promise that was worth a damn.”
I was given a room on the ground floor, and at first I was happy about that, it meant I didn’t have to use the staircase at night. But I was never very comfortable there. The little window looked out onto the street, you could hardly tell we were by the sea at all. And sometimes in the night, I could hear noises under the floorboards—like distant footsteps, shuffling about beneath the ground. I told Mrs. Gallagher about them, but she just shrugged, said she’d never heard of that before. But she moved me upstairs to the box room. There was that whispering sound in the box room, but it was just the wind and the ocean spray, and I liked it, and soon I found the strange echo it made in the darkness very comforting, like the elements were trying to send me to sleep.
When the hotel packed out, and it did most of July and Augu
st, even the box room had to be let. Then I would share a bed with Mrs. Gallagher. It was a large bed, and quite comfortable, and there was plenty of room—and I was a little afraid at first that a big woman like Mrs. Gallagher would snore, George snored something chronic and he wasn’t half her size. But she slept so still, sometimes it was though she was hardly beside me at all.
I want you to know nothing untoward ever happened between me and Mrs. Gallagher. And when August was over somehow I just didn’t move out from the room, and I just stayed with her. It meant there was one less bed to make.
And when the pregnancy was full on and I couldn’t do much work, Mrs. Gallagher never minded. She said I could stay in bed, or sit downstairs, whatever made me most comfortable, and she’d bring me cups of tea, and slices of cake, anything I wanted. “It’s nearly time,” she said to me one day, and I asked whether I should go to the hospital. “You don’t need a hospital,” she said, “I can do this. Do you trust me?” And I did trust her, and I was glad, I hadn’t wanted to leave.
She fetched hot water and towels, and you came out, and it was easy, I think your birth was the easiest thing I had ever done. You were the simplest, most natural thing in my entire life. “It’s a boy,” said Mrs. Gallagher, and she looked happy, but I think she may have been a little disappointed. She helped me name you. Did you know that? Do you like your name? It was Mrs. Gallagher who picked it.
She told me that I shouldn’t call her Mrs. Gallagher, I should call her Nathalie. And I did so, from time to time, just to make her smile. But I thought of her as Mrs. Gallagher, and I liked her that way—not formal, you understand, but protective, and strong, and better than me.
I started in my sleep, I couldn’t breathe. I opened my eyes and saw a figure was standing over the bed, and I was held down, there was a hand tight across my mouth. I couldn’t call out.
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