Her Victory

by Alan Sillitoe

  While she worked she didn’t think. The vacuum cleaner from the cupboard on the stairs wouldn’t suck the grit easily. What was left clinging to the floor had to be lifted with fingers and fed to the nozzle as if the zoo had boarded one of its tamer and more delicately nurtured animals on her for a month while the keeper went on holiday. George had shown her how to unblock a vacuum cleaner by reversing the hose and blowing out the obstructions after switching on the power. She tried. A cloud of rainbow-coloured fluff shot over the carpet, but it took only a few minutes for the nozzle to suck it clean again.

  She peeled a potato, an onion and a carrot, and dropped them to boil in the same water. She put a mutton chop under the grill, then set a slice of bread and an apple on the table. Being hungry, she was not unhappy. When the onion brought water to her eyes she no longer felt like weeping. At forty years old, and alone for the first time, she smiled because such misery as she felt made her happy in her own way and nobody else’s.

  She sat in front of the fire, a woollen hat pulled over her ears, and a hand in her pocket squeezing the tenpence coins because they would keep her warm till morning. She kept her coat and gloves on. In the spring she would get a train to the nearest countryside and smell clean air, even if she had to walk through muddy fields to reach it.

  When from her previous warm home she had tried to imagine being so beleaguered, she had seen herself as a cypher without purpose. The spice and anodyne of reality had been missing, and she was sufficiently herself not to feel in any way a cypher, because the process of surviving provided enough reality to be going on with. An advantage she had not foreseen was that you could talk to yourself, and that when you spoke your thoughts aloud they became more coherent than when they stayed locked in. On first hearing her voice she made up her mind that it had got to stop: ‘If anyone hears you they’ll think you’ve gone off your head.’

  But she had no control over the need to hear herself, and thought that if she didn’t control it she really would go mad. Her voice filled the room and proved she was sane. When she spoke, her body was warmer. The noise told her she was alive. She felt more herself when she could listen to her voice, and decide whether or not it was talking sense, than when the same useless phrases spun in silence. She had never heard her voice before. It was worth arguing with. She hadn’t been able to listen and know how it sounded when in conversation with George. Her words had been distorted, and emotional confrontation had made them more his than hers, which would not be the case anymore.

  Occasionally forgetting to say that she did not like it here, she was most tempted to when on the street, and when she knew that she must under no circumstances talk aloud. The urge had been hard to resist, except for saying the odd word in a supermarket, or while waiting at a traffic light. So she allowed herself to talk all she liked in her room, hoping there would be less impulse to let anything out on the street where others might hear.

  Happy enough in her freedom, she couldn’t believe George was much bothered by her departure. He wasn’t to blame that she had gone, and nor was she. It had taken them a long time to realize they weren’t made for each other, though she was sure George didn’t yet know, and was mystified at what she had done. He had grown fat through never knowing where his next meal was coming from, having been brought up in a family where everything in sight was eaten in case they never got fed again, a scramble for existence which left him with dulled perceptions where other people’s feelings were concerned.

  Putting on weight was part of George’s getting-on in life. Having more energy than a thin man, he wanted feeding. He made good money, drove himself at his work, and needed to eat, and became stout in his self-assurance. Nobody could blame him for that – but don’t expect him to care what you were thinking.

  He had become his own boss, which in his family was everyone’s dream if not their ambition, though only he had the force and intelligence to show the way. His three brothers hoped it would come by winning the pools, or by pulling off the Great Train Robbery one rainy night when nobody was looking. They never thought of giving themselves a start by working hard, so that the acquiring of money bred an interest and momentum all its own. George had a passion for it, but first he had an obsession for making objects that were useful to others. He’d had little time for her, in that every hour cost money, and she wondered if any man would have, since she did not seem to possess whatever it was that any man needed from her.

  She had lived without thought on the matter, though at the time it hadn’t seemed so. But too late was too late, and she couldn’t go back. She burned the telegraph forms one by one in the hearth before the gas fire.

  The steam smelled good. She prodded the vegetables, and drained them into the sink. The meat spluttered in its fat. She was more famished than hungry, but took the heated plate to the table as if to serve someone else. It was for her alone. She stood back for a moment to look, then sat down to eat.

  6

  The estate agent had been unsure about letting the room in case, being on her own, she might use it for a particular purpose. She’d read the evening paper, telephoned from a box outside her bed-and-breakfast near St Pancras, gone by tube to Holland Park, and located herself on a London Transport map and by asking the way. The agent was waiting between the crumbling pillars of the gate. He said it was on the top floor, which became obvious, unless they were going to a hencoop on the roof.

  ‘The only other person up here,’ he said, pointing to a brown-painted door, as distinct from hers which seemed to be a kind of tawny orange, ‘is a merchant navy chap who goes away for weeks at a time. It’ll be very quiet. If that’s what you want.’

  ‘I do,’ she said.

  His hair was cut short and combed into a parting. Most men had it dangling over their shoulders as if they were teachers or beatniks, but she supposed that the older they got the shorter it would go again, till at sixty it would be as clipped as their grandfathers’. He had trouble with the lock: ‘Are you from the north?’

  Did he think she was an Eskimo? ‘I’m from the Midlands.’

  He opened the door. ‘Permanently?’

  It was rancid and cold. She hoped he had seen from her face, and judged by her talk, that she hadn’t come to London just to have a good time. Hard to remember when she had last told a lie: ‘I start a new job next week, in a bank.’

  He looked at her, and she expected him to ask for references. Maybe he won’t, for such a pig-hole as this. ‘A student had it till last week. We haven’t had time to clean it yet. When do you want to move in?’

  He didn’t ask what bank she would work at. Obviously didn’t believe her. None of his business. He must be used to people like me. ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll get the woman on the ground floor to tidy it up.’

  ‘Don’t bother. I’ll have a go myself.’ Perhaps her accent hid the irony. Was it possible to clean such a place? She paid a month’s rent in cash. Maybe he wasn’t as surprised as he looked.

  ‘If you leave me, how will you keep yourself?’ George wrapped a serviette around his cut finger. ‘Beg on the street? Get national assistance?’ He leered: ‘Go on the batter and pick up a man now and again? That’s all you’ll be able to do.’ Rather than mince words, he threw them at her like stones. She stayed rigid till his Ford Granada crunched over the gravel and turned on to the avenue. His wounded hand lifted in case she waved goodbye. I was only joking, he would have said, if she had welcomed him home that night. You know me! Bark worse than bite. Don’t mean it.

  Let him scoff. Didn’t like it here, but she would never go back, wanted to be as far from any man as it was possible to get. Shows how little he had learned if he thought she wanted to pick up men. She lacked energy to do anything except clean the room. Someone had run a sweeping brush over the floor, but if a man had been moving in it would probably have been dusted as well.

  After the initial swill-down and polish she bought a square of coloured cloth from an Indian shop and tacked it on the wal
l. She cleaned the window inside, and as far as she dared lean outside, with newspaper and plain water till it was impossible to tell there was glass in the frames. Light shone in, even the sun now and again.

  At the risk of breaking a leg she stood a chair on the table and found that with a wet rag she could wipe the ceiling white. Such hard labour took a whole day, for each square-foot needed rubbing several times before cleanliness showed through. Where plaster had crumbled on the walls she pinned a couple of old scarves, and a flower poster from the Royal Academy.

  Let George see her now. She didn’t like it here, which wasn’t strange, all things considered, but at least she could live with no future. The idea of getting a job before her money ran out frightened her, and she refused to think about it. Having finished making the place habitable, she lived in fear. She hadn’t worked at anything for years, because George had thought that if she went out to find a job people would say he was going bankrupt and needed his wife to get money for him.

  ‘We’ve all the spot-cash we need,’ he said when she mentioned doing more with her life than staying at home. He liked to keep her out of harm’s way, and busy whenever he was in the house. She thought he spoke from his need to prove he could care for her, but she should have known better. Men were either too fat to be affectionate, or too lean to be lovable, she told herself when the unreality of life worried her into visions and grudges.

  She couldn’t do much except office work and housekeeping, though when the time came she would find something and be glad of it. Because she’d had no diverting occupation it had been easier for her to walk out on him. She had saved her energy to make the only move that had any meaning since the one that got her married at nineteen, and to view that event as the most important in her life proved how empty her existence had been. Never again. Hadn’t liked it there, either. They had no doubt said they loved each other at the beginning, but she had no memory of it. To get married for life was too long a period. The vows were weighted too much against a woman. If you could only get married on a seven-year licence she wondered how many would apply for a second term.

  She pulled the mattress off the bed, dipped rag in a tin of paraffin to wipe the springs and headboard. Bugs could be everywhere. The smell was horrible, but necessary. When she went out she would leave the window open.

  They had called it love, which was always something other than what it was said to be, but it could only have been the usual mix up of two young kids. She had wanted to change her life by getting into the adventure of controlling a house as she had previously arranged the furniture and kitchen utensils of her doll’s cottage.

  Marriage was a way out of the overheated office she worked in. With twenty other girls of the City Transport Company she checked receipt rolls of money collected on the buses, and entered the amounts in ledgers before reckoning the totals. They were busy from half-past eight in the morning till half-past four in the afternoon. It was familiar, and she liked it, but after four years she wanted to get away yet not take another job.

  Best not to examine the mattress too closely as she pulled it back on to the bed. Looking in a shop window, events on the television screens moved in silence on their different channels. A few children from school sucked lemonade tins, while a chick was shown struggling out of an egg on a bed of straw. The first hairline cracks appeared, then a split, and a gap before she knew what was happening. After a pause came a webbed foot, and more collapse of the shell, followed by a hole, till a side of the shell fell in, and another panel was pushed out, and the damp feathers of a small moving body became obvious. The rest of the shell dropped around, and the silence and distance created by the glass, and the further remoteness of the event within the television screen, and the continuous rush of traffic and movement of people behind, gave a feeling of having watched a birth that had nothing to do with life at all.

  A stack of cardboard boxes by the door were waiting to be carted away. Rummaging, she found thin sheets of plastic, which she folded under her arm, and now used to wrap the mattress top and bottom into an envelope so as not to be touched by the stains from whoever had slept there before.

  Marrying George in order to go to bed with him was a part of the uprooting that she had hardly thought about. She had set off for Wollaton one Sunday morning on an old sit-up-and-beg machine with a case around the chain that had once been her mother’s. Telling the story as if someone was in the room to listen made her feel as young as when it had taken place.

  The long brick walls of Wollaton Park stood clean and distinct after a night of rain. Clouds were high and woolly, and a west wind cooled her face as she pedalled. The main road forked near the turn-off for Martins Pond, and she kept to the quieter way curving between high banks towards the village.

  The monotony lulled her, and it was marvellous to be in fresh air after the night in her stuffy home, and five days in an overwarm office. Out of breath going up the slope, she pulled the three-speed backward so as not to get off before reaching the church, which meant half-standing from the saddle and pressing hard. The top of the incline was close, but as she drew near, the chain slipped from the ratchet inside its crankcase.

  She leaned the bicycle against a wall in the middle of the village, but did not have the knack or strength to lift the machine and press the pedal with one foot so as to snap the chain back into place. Hands black with grease, she already felt the effort of pushing the whole way home. Trying again, the bike capsized.

  His face was almost touching. ‘You’ll never do it like that, duck.’

  ‘Thanks for telling me.’

  ‘I’ll show you.’ Leaning his own slim racer by the wall, he pressed the chain on in a few seconds. ‘It’s the knack as yer want!’

  ‘I suppose it is.’ She didn’t care to encourage his vulgarity, though he seemed nice enough. ‘Thanks, anyway.’

  ‘Trust a proper cyclist to rescue a lady in distress! I’ve been to Heanor already this morning.’ He stood upright by his bicycle, head bent back as he tapped a map poking from his pocket. ‘To see a pal at work. He broke his arm. Where did you get that old dragon-bike?’

  ‘Oh, it belonged to my mother before she died.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear about that.’

  She was amused at his sympathy. ‘That was years ago.’

  His foot was on the pedal, as if ready for a race. ‘I’ll ride back to Nottingham with you in case the chain comes off again. It is a bit loose.’

  She would leave the office and get a bus for Old Lenton to meet him walking out of the factory at five. He had only to look at a broken contraption to know what to do. He tinkered with his fingers, prodded a screwdriver here and there, and applied a spanner till whatever it was slotted back into place and shifted in tune when the motor was switched on and electricity flowed through. The women pampered him, and he took their praise as gospel truth, whereas they were on piece rates and only wanted him to mend their machines straightaway.

  At the office she was considered barmy going out with someone who worked in a factory. Her best friend asked if he smelt of grease, then said it was only a joke when she saw Pam’s anger. But Pam knew she was incensed only because she herself had wondered whether she ought to pack him in, though she liked him enough to see how daft and snobbish it would be to do so.

  He had loved machinery, even before leaving school. His claims of proficiency were true, though he wasn’t backwards at boasting where his skills were concerned. He saw the thought in her eyes. ‘You can’t blame me, can you? It’s all I’ve got.’

  He was more right than he knew, for he treated anyone close to him like a machine, and only those people he had to deal with in business like human beings. When a factory woman told her how smart he was at tackling machines Pam thought it fortunate both for him and the world that he was. She could feel the woman trying to decide what a young man, the spark of everyone’s life, saw in her. She wondered herself, and later thought that maybe the girls in the ticket office had been right wh
en they looked amazed at her marrying someone who worked in a factory no matter how good he was at his job.

  Behind his sway walk and wide smile, and his opinions which were more overbearing the less he knew about something, he was as insecure as a rat between three traps, and his loud views grew harder to bear the more she realized how disturbed he was at seeing that she believed less and less in his abilities regarding the human side of life. A livelier wife might have made him feel even more uncertain in his ways, but with Pam he was able to further his precarious self-esteem by appearing happier than he really was, in the hope that he would get more out of life, which stance enabled him to abandon the commonplace and devote himself entirely to his ambition.

  He gave up his job, rented a workshop, borrowed from the bank and installed machinery. He called it doing his bit for the export trade, saying in one of their arguments that work was his only happiness because he didn’t have to think about anything else while doing it. And Pam was content because the more he had to do the less he bothered her.

  She kept his accounts, filed insurance cards, typed letters and bills. His trade prospered, and he allowed her to help as if doing her a favour, so that she would have something to pass her otherwise empty time. They discussed all the administration of his business that seemed too tedious for him to manage. Then he hired a secretary, without mentioning it to her, because he thought the work took too much of her time, and that she would feel better without having the job around her neck.

  ‘That might be true,’ she answered, ‘but you ought to have told me you were going to get somebody else.’

  He hardly gave her time to finish. ‘I wanted it to be a surprise.’

  ‘We needn’t have got married.’

  He looked into her eyes, pilloried by her bitterness, and she was sorry that both were in a situation which could not be remedied without vast damage. His fists curled, as if he would strike, but he went back to the mood of his early days, saying jovially: ‘Don’t get like that, duck!’