Her Victory

by Alan Sillitoe

  Being a sensitive person who could not resist allowing her thoughts to speak for her, she also craved the glamour of appearing enigmatic, and had not yet found a way of combining the two desires. Though you could be more than one person at the same time to yourself, it rarely worked with others. She regretted her outspokenness, and the harsh reactions of those who occasionally revealed her to be someone whom she had thought she was not.

  Phyllida was quite the opposite, which was why they were able to tolerate each other. Or perhaps the similarities were sufficiently concealed for them to be able to deceive each other that they did not exist. Mutual but loving deception made existence livable, and men were unable to deceive, she had found, and wanted everything their own way. They hadn’t the time, the inclination or the intelligence for it, and they were, in general, too fearful of their own sex and identity. There was a positive side to deception when it was done to enhance a relationship, to build understanding. It became a creative endeavour born of love, and not to be used in a negative way as a weapon or with a view to damage – something you couldn’t trust a man not to use even if he was sensible enough to know about it.

  Phyllida, who had taught her to be aware of such nuances, at the same time only spoke when she had something to say. Her talk was seldom interesting, though it might have been more so if she had let it out loudly and with a little of the peripheral junk that cluttered most minds. But she couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. It was too deep to tell. Her speech was prim, measured and, inevitably, to the point. Being well brought up, well controlled, and well trained in her job, she never let go of herself, except at those moments when both choice and intention were taken from her.

  Even at nearly forty years of age Judy had not learned how to be other than she was. Wanting to dissimulate and be more controlled, and knowing that she might never achieve it, caused her to appear more irresponsible and passionate than if she didn’t care how she felt. She was occasionally upset by it, though only for a moment or two, because such misery was at least something about herself which she never showed to others.

  Either Tom had made the room tidy in his sailor-like way before going out, or Pam had done it as part of wanting those who found her body to realize that even in death she was still a housewife, and who by killing herself had known what she was doing. It wasn’t so. She hadn’t planned anything, must have realized there was someone next door who would find her before it was too late, otherwise she would have done it the night before.

  Judy turned from the mirror and walked across the room to pick up a sapphire ring which glinted under the bed. Strips of sticky paper hanging at the window like streamers from a lost election indicated that Pam’s attempt had been more serious than she allowed for. The ring clattered to the middle of the table and lay still. Pam must have chucked it away in a rage before flicking the gas on. It still smelled of the soap she had used to pull it off. Or had she decided to kill herself after thoughtlessly getting rid of it, feeling so vulnerable that nothing else was possible?

  Pam turned with a cry to the wall, saying words too garbled to decipher. In her dreams was a dark and frightening barrier. She jerked her legs, and the bedclothes slid towards the floor. Judy pulled them back and covered her, then held her cold pale hand to calm the nightmares, hoping Tom would never come back because it would be nice to sit like this for ever.

  She had no work today, and would shop soon with the last couple of pounds till she got the children’s allowance, returning by the market stalls to pick up enough vegetables for a soup, an old stand-by when cash was short. She liked the peace of a room that was not hers, a solitude in which she could reflect intensely because another person was sleeping near by who had far worse problems than her own. She could always get money from her mother in Colchester, but disliked the idea of her father answering the telephone, or moralizing over her letter when he came home from the office. They sent clothes for the children, but she would take nothing else.

  She couldn’t believe in what had made her marry the man she did, was astonished and appalled whenever she looked back on it. Every act had been swamped by a thoughtlessness which drew her to the lowest common denominator of what she then imagined her spirit required. The primal aim had been to brush aside all that her family and friends wanted of her, so as to find out exactly what it was she wanted of herself. She wouldn’t let them use her fate for the gratification of their inferior wisdom, and wanted to be free, so without any consideration for them (or for herself, as it turned out) she left university after a year and took a room and job in London. She was too stupid to realize that striving for independence was self-indulgence, and too young to know – which now seemed obvious – that self-indulgence leads only to self-destruction.

  At a party she met a little androgynous middle-aged woman who owned a secondhand bookshop in a small country town. Both men and women seemed to fall in love with Judy in those days: but I should have known, she mused, that something was wrong, because I didn’t feel love for any of them.

  Helen lived in peace, with two neutered cats, and whatever girl she happened to pick up for a few months. ‘Whether I’m a biological dead-end,’ she said on a winter’s evening after the shop was closed, and they sat by the upstairs fire toasting bread against the bars, ‘is neither here nor there.’ She relished her isolation and the power she felt from it, which made her interesting to any young girl.

  Judy was fascinated by the way she kept busy compiling catalogues or writing letters, and she never saw her either bored or unhappy with the two rooms of books which made up the shop. Helen knew what to buy, and collectors would drive from London. The bell rattled, and a face showed itself. Sometimes a customer wouldn’t appear for two hours after the door was unbolted. At other times a browser would already be waiting on the pavement.

  A man stayed for an hour, as if afraid to go back into the rain, looking at every book intently. She observed his medium height, pinkish face, well-lit grey eyes, and straight reddish hair cut fairly short. His open duffel-coat had special pockets, for the thieves’ mirror installed on the ceiling showed at least six books go in as he moved around the shelves, and it still didn’t look laden.

  Helen had gone to a sale. Judy was supposed to call the police, and her hand moved to the telephone. Two shoplifters had been prosecuted before her time. He approached the desk. ‘I’ll have this.’

  You might as well: you’ve had so much else. A copy of Middlemarch. He had taste – but had made a feast. ‘Four shillings.’

  ‘Lots of nice books here,’ he said, smiling.

  His look intensified, for he guessed by her eyes that she had seen him loading his pockets, and he wanted to solve the mystery as to how she knew, when no one had ever rumbled him before. Yet he was prepared to sacrifice the pleasure of an explanation provided she did not try to stop him leaving the shop. She read the condition in his gaze, and when he became convinced that she had, he diminished its intensity but did not smile as pleasantly as before.

  Civilization must have taken a big leap forward when the language of the eyes had finally been enriched by words. ‘There’ll be less now that you’ve been in here.’

  ‘Only one, I’m afraid.’ He handed his coins as if there weren’t too many more where they came from. ‘I’ll try to do better next time.’

  ‘We do sell quite a lot of books.’ He seemed to have doubted that many people actually bothered to pay in such an out-of-the-way place. ‘But not all that many to students, I admit.’

  He fastened his coat-toggles. ‘Our grants aren’t much to write home about these days, unless to ask the old folks to top ’em up a bit.’

  She nodded at his girth, which didn’t match his thinnish face. ‘You seem to feed quite well on it.’

  ‘We do our best.’ His head was close. He decided to turn prosaic, and get out as soon as possible. ‘We eat communally, fifteen to a pot, a yoghourt pot!’

  The bell tinkled as he left. She had been bullied. She hadn’t been living with a
nother woman long enough to know how to put men properly in their place. She was angry, and she should know, anyway. After dialling one digit, she replaced the receiver, a failure to act which, she was to recollect, fucked up her life.

  She had allowed him to charm her into not reporting his theft, and in being disloyal to Helen. She was supposed to write the title and amount of every volume sold, even if out of the sixpenny box. Helen knew, or seemed to know, every book in the place, and when she missed them Judy wouldn’t be able to tell her how they had gone. Maybe Helen would think she had pocketed the money. She wouldn’t be trusted any more.

  She put a card in the window: ‘Back in Five Minutes’, and went to the High Street to buy meat for their supper. Looking through the window of Silver’s Grill she saw the book thief reading his morning paper.

  ‘Remember me?’

  His eyes were deadened by print.

  ‘I work in a shop.’ She stood by his side.

  He put six spoonsful of sugar in his coffee, stirred, drank, and shuddered. ‘Woolworths?’

  ‘No. Nor Marks and Sparks, either.’

  ‘Did I get you pregnant?’

  She took off her coat. ‘You might at least buy me a cup of something, after I allowed you to steal those six books.’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘My reactions were slow, otherwise you’d have been in the copshop by now.’ His duffel-coat hung over the next seat, and the loot was, she supposed, in the cloth bag by his feet. ‘Was that the closest you’ve been to getting caught?’

  His hand went up for the waitress. ‘I’ve had closer shaves. Two coffees, please. I’m eating into my profits, you realize.’

  ‘I could still call the police.’

  He looked at her. ‘You could, but why?’

  ‘Aren’t you ashamed of stealing?’ She had never come face to face with a thief before.

  ‘You’ve got your definitions wrong. But then, uneducated people like you always do.’

  He must have done his National Service already, and she also supposed he came from a very middlebrow home – if that – to accuse her of being uneducated. And if he really was educated – if that was the word (though she had every reason to doubt that he was) – such a slur would not have been thrown at her. If he really thought so, he would have kept the opinion to himself.

  ‘You’ve got your definitions wrong,’ he repeated. ‘I’ve never stolen. All goods are produced at the expense of the working class, and wealth is property, and property is theft, so theft is the only way of getting property back into the hands of the working classes where it belongs. A mere redistribution of wealth. So don’t accuse me of stealing, you right little tight little – actually rather big – middle-class tart. You’ve blackmailed me into buying you a coffee, and if you insist on calling the capitalist property-guarding class-conscious gestapo-coppers I’ll have a long and very circumstantial tale to tell about how you connived in my removing those books from the shop – when they drag me into one of their illegal show-trial courts.’

  He was sweating. She had frightened him, and was satisfied – for the moment. ‘But what is stealing,’ she asked, ‘if that isn’t? If you did it in a socialist-workers’ state you’d be in the equivalent of Siberia for twenty-five years.’

  ‘Stealing is only from the working classes, and I’d never steal from them because if I did and they caught me they’d kick me to death – ugh!’

  He sounded so simple that she became more interested in him, and said: ‘But I work. And the woman I work for works, so we’re working class, aren’t we?’

  At his laughter, people sitting around hoped they had ended their lovers’ quarrel. ‘Nobody works who puts goods on display. They sell, and make profits. They tempt people. They ask for trouble.’

  She was convinced that his parents were shopkeepers, and learned later that she was right. ‘Somebody’s got to sell things,’ she said, ‘otherwise people wouldn’t be able to buy, would they?’

  ‘In my opinion,’ he said earnestly, as if his very soul were weeping for it to come about, ‘we should live in a utopian society where people wouldn’t buy, but earn.’

  She shuddered. ‘But they’d earn money, and then they’d have to buy.’

  He took the bowl of sugar from the next table, and began to scoop it up. ‘Only those who toiled would earn. It’ll take me a long time to explain it properly to you, and I only teach women who go to bed with me.’

  ‘Do you teach men in the same way?’

  He looked more disturbed than when she had mentioned calling the police. ‘In any case,’ she said, ‘when did you last toil in a factory, or a coal mine?’

  ‘I’m beginning to like you. I’m hitching back to Southampton. Want to come?’

  It was easier getting lifts with a girl. ‘I bloody don’t.’

  ‘Suit yourself. I’ll be back this way in a month.’

  ‘Don’t call at the shop.’

  ‘I’m bound to. I love books so much I have to steal ’em. And I’ve taken a fancy to you.’

  She lost her job. But he was loyal. When she got pregnant he married her, after her parents promised to spend five hundred pounds on the wedding and give them, which turned out to mean him, another thousand to get started.

  It was a hell she would never delve into again. The planet hadn’t been big enough for both of them. She’d tried to poison him, but had made a mistake in the dosage. I dined out somewhere yesterday, he said to the doctor, and must have eaten something bad. I was too drunk to know where the place was. He had tried to murder her. She had a six-inch scar on the shoulder to show where he had missed. I fell down the steps outside the house and cut myself on the foot-scraper. He was a savage bed-sitter terrorist who gave her no peace because she was the nearest victim, but who modified his depredations after she had broken an earthenware pot over his head. The out-patients’ department at the hospital had known her well. During every separate minute she had felt she was living for ever. Now that such torment had long been over she still didn’t know who or what she was, but that uncertain condition was by now established as her true self, and accepted with enough equanimity for her existence to be tolerable, sufficiently enjoyable for her to know she would never gas herself as the peacefully sleeping Pam had done.

  The struggle to stay alive generated the energy to keep going. Fighting against all hostilities created a pressure that did not allow her to contemplate such a way out. She reasoned, and became less despondent. With her free hand she wiped an eye that had become momentarily wet, and happiness at being alive caused her to squeeze the hand she was holding.

  Pam woke.

  ‘Feeling better?’

  She closed her eyes and lay back. Nothing to get up for.

  ‘You had a good sleep.’ Judy’s hand was held firm when she tried to draw it away. Her fingers opened in her anguish on seeing the mark of the wedding ring.

  The room was as if shielded by grey blankets. ‘I can’t see anything. Put the light on.’

  Judy smiled. ‘I will if you let go of my hand.’ There was an aroma of sweat and fear. He had bundled her into bed with her clothes on, but couldn’t have done otherwise, being the gentleman he was. ‘You should get undressed if you’re going to stay in bed. Be more comfortable.’

  The light made the room dull orange rather than grey. ‘If I do I’ll never get up. I’ve got to phone my husband.’

  She’d sent a letter saying what she intended to do, so he’d hot-foot it down and drag her back to the bijou den for a kitchen leucotomy. She looked for an unposted envelope, or screw of paper. ‘Why do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Nothing to hold. ‘What else is there?’

  ‘Did you tell anybody beforehand?’

  She sat up, and turned her head slowly. ‘I must stand.’

  Judy held her. ‘All right?’

  The world was empty. ‘I did it without thinking. I can’t trust myself.’

  Judy laughed. ‘Who of us can?’ She came from the window
. ‘If you get some work, and mix with people, you won’t do it again. There’s no point running back to hubby now that the worst is over.’

  ‘Perhaps she does want to go back to him.’ The door had opened too quietly to be heard through her talk. She was meddling dangerously, Tom thought, though considered it best not to say anything further on the matter. He expected a raging come-back, but Judy was like the weather, in that what you anticipated didn’t always manifest.

  ‘It’s up to her,’ was all she said.

  He was wet from the rain. ‘How are you?’ he asked Pam.

  ‘All right.’ She was morose – or she couldn’t recognize him. He had seen people close to death, and she didn’t look far off. But he felt an interest in her, though could ask no questions while she was still in the storm. He was repelled by what she had tried to do, and kept his thoughts clear in order not to condemn. Yet he had entered into her offence by doing what he could to save her. She had been caught by a death-dealing wave, and he had interfered with her fate by stopping it in mid-twist. On your own head be it, he told himself, but he didn’t want to let her out of his sight in case another stray wave took her under.

  ‘I bought food,’ he said. ‘After I get rid of these wet clothes why don’t you both come next door and have some lunch?’

  Pam felt she never wanted to eat again; and Judy said: ‘I must go out and do my own shopping.’

  He stood, tense and uncertain. ‘I have a screwdriver next door, and some bigger screws. I’ll fix the latch back on, that I snapped in my hurry to get in.’ There was no answer. He stayed a little longer so as not to leave too abruptly. ‘Anyway, the food will be next door, if you care for it.’ He expected no response, but heard Pam say, as he turned to go, that she would wash and change first.

  She remembered a struggle, but couldn’t recall what had happened beyond his cruelty at pulling her out of a warm sleep that ought to have lasted for ever. She had seen his face at a time too far off to remember who he was. She had been drawn from that dream by a long scalding ache. This same man had stopped her going even further back into her childhood dream. In bringing her cold skin into more contact with daylight he had crushed the dream for ever, yet wakened her at the same time.