Her Victory

by Alan Sillitoe

They crossed the road for breakfast. She felt a sharp pain in the middle of her back, unable to take close to a full breath, or make a complete yawn which it seemed vital to do, giving her a tense expression that Tom remarked on as she poured the coffee.

  ‘The bed was damp,’ he said. ‘Steamy, in fact. Maybe you’ll feel better when we’re on the road.’

  The old cure-all, she hoped. She was hungry, which was a good sign. When she managed to get a full breath she expressed gratitude at being alive.

  13

  They packed, paid, and set off, Pam at the steering wheel. The road twisted through lush country, and after a few miles she came up to a gaggle of lorries impossible to overtake. She resigned herself to the trundle, holding back from the one in front while Tom stared at the countryside. A long stretch of road was needed to overtake, but when there seemed sufficient, vehicles were always coming the other way. There was nothing to do, he said, except sweat it out. Only a lunatic would try to shoot by. According to the map there would be some dual carriageway in twenty miles. And the land would get flatter by the river.

  The ache in her back was as if a large pin had stuck there which only let her take a full breath if she began slowly and hid her intention of breathing at all. Before she could succeed in her purpose she would often come full-stop against a barrier of pain and anxiety that forced a retreat back into shallow breathing. She would try again, using the same tactics, and when a full breath came the relief felt like victory indeed.

  The road was empty from the opposite direction, but other cars out of the queue behind were already racing by. She wanted to stop driving, but it was impossible because the rheumatic pain and heavy dreams of the night goaded her on.

  She also felt the tension in him when he was no longer interested in the scenery. He was impatient because she could not overtake the lorry and get on. He lit two cigarettes and passed one, but after a few puffs she left it in the ashtray. Speed was slow, but they progressed some miles, as he must have seen from the map. She only wanted to cover more of the road. Being a driver had its compensations, in that you forgot yourself. Who or what you were was of minor importance. You simply had to get ahead, and stay alive. Life was simple.

  ‘Is it clear?’

  There was nothing behind.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m going!’

  ‘Now?’ he urged.

  It was a game with basic rules, and they were in it together. It was her throw. She came down to third gear, moved into the clear, and accelerated forward. The enormous arseswaying lorry seemed by her side for ever, as if maintaining speed however much she increased hers.

  ‘Bit more gas,’ he said coolly.

  ‘More gas!’

  A bend was close, perhaps half a kilometre, but a hundred-mile-an-hour Citroën coming around could reduce it to nothing in a few seconds. Her indicator was already flashing for when it would be necessary to nip sharply in.

  She was at the front of the lorry, then beyond it. A car from around the bend was flashing headlights as it came towards her, a jungle-monster out of the bush and dead-set for her death. The lorry behind signalled with its light, and she got safely in, swaying slightly then straightening as she took the bend.

  She felt triumphant, as if she had passed a test, but decided from then on to be careful.

  The lorry she had overtaken was only a foot behind her rear bumper, keeping a full battery of headlights beamed into her mirror.

  ‘The sod! He knows it’s a woman driving.’ She increased speed so that he fell behind.

  ‘At the next place,’ Tom said, ‘there’s a Relais Routier eating-house where we can have a proper meal.’

  The pain was acute in her chest and back ribs, but a full breath came more often, the tension relaxing as they shared a bottle of wine over lunch. She wondered whether a lorry man who came in hadn’t been the driver of the one she had overtaken. ‘It’s good to have a co-driver to share the labours of the road,’ Tom said.

  ‘Hard to believe.’ But he meant it, she knew, touching his glass with hers. ‘Your turn when we set off.’

  A youngish cadaverous-looking man came in clothed in black leather, probably a motorcyclist, she thought. His tall figure, pale face and staring gentian-blue eyes attracted her. He took a table by the curtains, as if he wanted to observe traffic going by, even while eating. He disturbed her, though he didn’t care or even realize. The waitress took him a litre of wine, and Pam turned away, to go on with her meal.

  They walked the town for an hour, stood at the ramparts by the church and looked down a steep declivity with heavily wooded banks. She saw the black-clad motorcyclist travelling along the road they had come in by.

  Tom drove as if to make up for lost time, back on the cavalry charge when the road straightened, overtaking traffic as if hoping to get in front and have an empty highway to himself.

  Impossible, he knew. There would always be someone ahead as long as you were in life and not death. But the striving was there which, he supposed, would never leave him.

  There was no hurry, she knew. Embroiling dreams pulled her from the ever-rolling road, the motorized dragon-roar of traffic passing from the opposite direction, and high flat clouds over the riverine landscape. She went willingly to sleep, giving herself to a change from the eternal sound and motion of travel. George, pursuing and ranting, followed into her dreams. She was glad to wake when the map fell from her knees, and was happy to see Tom’s face. ‘Was I dozing long?’

  ‘Half an hour.’ She glimpsed his profile as he concentrated on his work. She wanted to kiss him, but to do so might smash them to pieces, and bring their return more quickly to the kind of end they would never hope for. He felt her scrutiny. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘The aches and pains have nearly gone.’

  He smiled. It was easy to make him. His face, difficult to focus, turned into George’s, and she heard an unstoppable scream tear itself from her ribs. I was only wondering whether it was you and not somebody else.

  The car slowed. ‘What is it?’

  ‘There was something in my eye. An insect. It’s gone now.’ He was troubled. Who wouldn’t be? ‘How far’s the next place with a hotel?’

  ‘Fifteen kilometres,’ she told him.

  ‘We’ve done enough today.’

  They went into the town, trees along the road, people walking the pavements. They lived here, worked here, were born and would die here, most of them. She envied them. Life seemed calm. Young girls strolled with their boy-friends. There was a public square, with a newspaper kiosk and garden seats. The streets were narrow, and shops open. It was like being back in the world when he parked and they stood upright on the gravel to stretch themselves. She belonged nowhere, only to herself. Yet she belonged everywhere she came to, and to nowhere in particular, the only certainty was that she was with Tom, covering the trail of a journey without end.

  The hotel was modern, their room on the fourth floor. Out of the window she saw river and country beyond immediate roofs. ‘We must look like tramps coming out of the car.’

  ‘People are used to seeing such things.’

  They washed and changed.

  ‘We’ll soon feel human again,’ he said.

  He lay on the bed, and no sooner was his head on the pillow than he was asleep. It was still light outside, so she picked up the car keys and drew the curtains so that he wouldn’t wake till dinner.

  She walked across the road to the parking space and unlocked the door, wanting the basket so as to buy food for tomorrow’s stint. To reach Dieppe by evening and get on the Channel ferry wouldn’t leave time for a sit-down meal. Broad daylight invited her to turn on the ignition. She backed out. A hundred miles would roll before he awoke. Traffic was leaving town, and she joined it, cars behind and in front, hers anonymous and unremarkable, one of the crowd.

  Rolls of cloud lay on low hills ahead. If she met Judy by the kerb of the tree-lined road she would give her a lift, providing they were going to the sam
e destination. It was laughable to be free. The ease of driving with no one else in the car was so much greater. She could go on for ever, until coming bang up against frontier or coastline, when it would be seen that the car wasn’t in her name. Even then, she might get through.

  She would ride awhile and go back. She loved him too much to let him worry. He must be wakened for supper. She saw him sleeping, his exhaustion at last in repose. It was rare enough, these days. She wanted to be with him, and looked for a place to turn.

  At a traffic island she went left instead of right. A car from the opposite direction smashed into her left side. Too late to avoid or beneficially stop. There was a rending of metal, a smash of windscreen and headlight, and a fearful jerk at the neck that spun her eyes into blackness.

  14

  By nine at night Hilary and Sam were so deadbeat that few squeaks or mumbles were still to come. They’d had their baths, been fed and sent to bed, and nothing could break the tranquillity of the hours that followed. Traffic noises diminished, and even the muted beat of the sea contributed to peace.

  The security of living in Tom’s flat, minus the tension of wondering where the next tenpenny piece was coming from, made her feel more bodily worn out than she ever had. Having no worries, she decided, will be the death of me, unless I get used to it. The fight was worth making, considering, as she did, that her struggle had been sufficient to pay any debt towards sin and sloth that she might at some time have incurred.

  She put her supper plate on the piano top, and set up the card-table by the fireplace. Her unease was caused by wondering when such good fortune – there was no other word for it – would end. She tried not to care. Her body and spirit wallowed in the succour that had dropped from heaven in the shape of this seaside flat and the money Tom allowed her.

  The painting of the dead officer above the mantelpiece was taken down the day they came in, and stood in the hall where no one could see it. Sam had cracked the canvas by a nudge from his elbow, and a stab from the heel of his boot, on a race to the door with Hilary, injuries which distorted the pink-glo cheek and changed the angle of the gun barrel. But she joined the cracks with glue and coloured them with a child’s painting set, and hoped the wanderers wouldn’t notice on their return. She couldn’t remember when Sam had last shed tears, and his distress at the damage to what she considered to be the vilest bit of painting she’d ever seen almost brought tears to her own eyes.

  She cooked at midday so as to have an easy time in the evening, when she fixed a cold supper of bread and cheese, and made a pot of black coffee in the fancy alchemical percolator of Tom’s old aunt. The kids had a dinner at school, and more or less looked after themselves, but she gave them breakfast and kept the flat in order, and spent any spare hours reading her way through shelves of novels by Trollope and George Eliot. Time passed, but the golden days would end, because Pam had phoned a few days ago to say they were on their way home. She expected them any moment, and then where would she be?

  She sipped scalding coffee between bites of sandwich, trying to decide who she was in love with. The absence of Tom and Pam emphasized the isolated unreality of her feelings, which she hoped wouldn’t be altogether denied when they got back. She had been surprised by the realization that there had to be a man as well as a woman in her life. Perhaps such deficient people as myself, she thought, need both, but if so I don’t mind being in that category, especially if it leads me to become less deficient.

  She was consoled by the fact that she could admit the truth at last. To indulge in dreams was a cure for exhaustion, a necessary exercise because at the moment there was neither man nor woman to comfort her. Perhaps there never would be again. They’d surely be too involved with each other to give any attention when they got back, especially now a baby was in the offing, but at least she would have passed time in that twilight aura of knowing there was one way which would allow her to live fully. And anything better than nothing was as good as having everything. If her hope to be with both of them turned out to be no more than her favourite fantasy, the knowledge of her possibilities would remain, and perhaps lead to a resolution of some kind.

  After the children got into bed she changed to wearing one of the long skirts and high-necked blouses from the cupboard where Tom’s aunt had stored them. Slacks and sweater were slopped around in during the day, or put on to go out shopping. If it was chilly she donned Tom’s Merchant Navy overcoat, which seemed to be fashionable among the young these days. But for evenings she needed to feel different, hoping to reach part of herself long since forgotten.

  She walked the room, and poured a glass of brandy. The telephone sounded, but she let it ring. Poured into coffee, the brandy warmed her. Most likely it was a wrong number, or a heavy-breather wanting his night’s sport. There had been such cases lately. She sat in the armchair with legs resting on a stool. If the noise went on for a long time she had enough will to last it into silence.

  One had to know the basis of one’s relationship to love before connecting properly to life. Most people had the facility, she thought, because they reached the extent of their capacity early on, or imagined they did, which was the same thing. A proper existence must be founded on a correct appreciation of the half-hidden love that inevitably surfaced, and she knew that she had been in the presence of an enduring lustful affection which she called love ever since meeting Tom, and from the moment Pam had walked into her room one day out of the rain. It was an event of the lost meeting the lost, and feeling a sense of fulfilment as soon as they were in each other’s presence, or arms.

  She remembered that they had needed cornflakes and butter for the larder, so went into the kitchen to scribble on the shopping-list before she forgot. The vital pushed out the banal. To bring food into the flat was at least as important as her thoughts, though she’d never known a time when space hadn’t been found for both.

  The ringing stopped. She refilled her glass, the last drink before going to bed. Sleep would encircle her, like a ring of flame never to be broken out of. She would not take pills, though scores of boxes were in the bathroom cabinet. Most nights she lay with a book, sipped her drink and read till she fell asleep with the light on, and Sam woke her at half-past seven with a cup of tea. She would then get up and make breakfast, foul-tempered and zombie-like in her movements. Established in their new school, they went happily out at half-past eight, but not before looking downstairs for postcards from Tom and Pam. They had run back up with a few to show. He had written and told them to find the places on the map, like the good father he ought to have been.

  She would not leave when they got back. They would surely fit into the scheme of the flat. Not wanting to be idle and live off anyone, she would look for a job, only wanting to stay with them, and know that life was settled for a while.

  Such effrontery made her laugh. She called herself a fool, yet saw no reason not to indulge in such expectations. In the morning she would be her old self as she shouted at the kids to make sure they were clean before going to school. The raw day was a good cure-all. We are made up of dreams that can’t be real. Anything that becomes real was never a dream, but a hard-headed idea. Dreams were gorgeous, nonetheless. When the telephone sounded again she snapped off the receiver even before the second ring, her fingers ready to press out any obscenity:

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Judy?’

  The horror was that her husband had found the number, and was trying to get back with her. He had lost his job, flat, dolly-bird and car, and was on the streets with nowhere to go, and nothing more than the rags he stood in.

  ‘This is Tom.’

  She laughed. They were at Newhaven, and would be here in half an hour. There would be no sleep that night. They would drink and talk till dawn about their adventures.

  ‘Tom! You sound half-dead.’ He must have whacked himself by driving day and night.

  ‘Listen, Judy …’

  ‘I’m hearing you. Where from, though?’

  �
�In the middle of France.’

  ‘That’s a fine place to be!’

  ‘I have to tell you about Pam.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  ‘Bad news, I’m sorry to say. Where were you all evening? I couldn’t get through.’

  ‘I was in the bath, I suppose.’ She must have found she’s not pregnant after all. ‘What news? Tell me, for God’s sake!’

  She pressed a hand across her breasts, undoing a button of her blouse and fastening it while he tried to speak.

  ‘She had a smash in the car.’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘She went for a drive on her own. But I do feel dead. You’re right.’

  She broke in. ‘How is she?’ – thinking that the bloody fool had got her killed.

  ‘Neither of us are, though.’ He tried to laugh. He was putting a good face on it – the bastard.

  She couldn’t hear what he said. ‘Speak louder.’

  ‘She took the car, and had an accident.’ The pause lasted years. I’ll go grey twice over. But she wasn’t dead, or he would have said it as the first item on his official report.

  ‘What happened, then? How is she?’

  ‘She’ll be all right – in a while.’

  ‘What do you mean “All bloody right”?’

  ‘We thought she had broken her neck. She’s badly bruised. A few cuts. The baby will be all right. We won’t be back for a while. There’s a lot to say. I have to square the police.’

  ‘Don’t say that. They may be listening.’

  She thought he laughed. ‘It’s nothing like that. Just a bit of form-filling.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘I saw her tonight. She’s in the clinic here. She sends her love.’

  ‘What place are you at? Tell me, and I’ll come down. The kids can stay here. They’re very good at looking after themselves.’

  ‘Bless them!’ he said.

  He sounded drunk. Must have been at that flask again. Tears came to her eyes, but she clamped them back. ‘I’ll get to where you are by tomorrow evening.’