‘Claude, darling,’ I screamed, not that I truly cared whether the whole damn lot of them ran round stark naked.
‘It’s all right, my love, I have my lower garments.’
He had been attending to his roses outside, he explained. Julia and Norman (where had they been?) lay down behind the sofa and began to pluck at a harp that lay on its side. I did think foolishly that she was waiting for the kettle to boil, otherwise I should have gone to bed. I can’t allow myself to dwell on what happened later. Those little broken figures and the pieces of glass lying on the carpet. It was an accident. I’m not usually accident-prone, or predisposed to being clumsy. With what shame and remorse, with burning face and throbbing head, I retired to bed.
‘Good night, darlings. Oh, darling.’
‘Good night, my love.’
‘Good night, Shebah.’
‘Sleep well, my dove.’
I didn’t really sleep. I was too confused. This morning, at least before my accident (as it’s been described), Claude was very kind, very generous. Without suspicion, trustingly, I rose and cleaned my face and went out into the garden among the roses and the trees. Edward’s head wavered between two branches and a cloud of leaves. A bird sang and the sun shone palely overhead. When I was shot I distinctly heard Victorian Norman laughing. God forgive him.
It’s been quite an interesting two days. I feel a little guilty that I didn’t talk more to Edward. I seem to remember Lily telling me that I should say nice things about her to him. I imagine Claude said enough nice things for all of us. Nobody said anything nice about me, and I was fired upon at close range. Not such a surprising occasion after all. Have I not been reviled, cursed, wounded, all my life? Did not Prince Augustus of Saxony sustain a fracture of the skull the moment I was born?
The monotony of it all. While they lie indolent in the sun, assured of their worse agonies to come, I wait with closed eyes. For something, someone … for two great and gentle hands to lift me from my cross … for anything …
7
‘We must go,’ the man said again. He sounded angry and a little unhappy.
His wife put down the photograph at once and rose to her feet, smoothing her skirt down with her hands. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘What time is it?’
‘Gone one, and I’ve a meeting at three.’ He turned in a businesslike way to Claude and held out his hand. ‘It’s been very pleasant meeting you, Mr Perkins. May I ask if I hire a van to fetch my desk, or do you manage that side of it?’ He made to disengage his hand, but Claude held it firmly.
‘As a general rule I let my customers make their own arrangements,’ said Claude, ‘but you live quite near, so I’ll deliver it personally. Some time next week – maybe Monday or Tuesday. Tuesday most like, man.’
‘That’s very good of you. Much obliged.’
‘Do come again some time,’ invited Julia vaguely.
The couple got into their car. It was a big shiny car and there was a fluffy toy dangling from a string in the rear window. The woman didn’t wave goodbye. She bent her head, as if looking for something, and then the car drove off up the street.
Julia went straight into the kitchen and began to attend to the child’s nappies. Claude squatted beside the sink and put his hand in the waste bucket. ‘That fellow’s cheque is in here somewhere,’ he said.
‘His cheque?’
‘You swept it up, my love. It’s there somewhere. Look for it, Ju, when you’ve a moment.’
He stood upright and went out into the yard. He wiped his fingers on the white pillow in the pram. He decided he would deliver the desk in two weeks’ time, not one. He would put his arm about the woman and get her to confide in him. They would become friends and he would make her life richer, more varied. He would help her to sort out her husband.
Entering the barn, he walked its length until he came to the green sofa. He often sat here when he wanted to be alone. No one could spy on him, because it was impossible to see through the little window: the glass was too dim, and the creeper that climbed about the barn was too thick. He sat down and took the letter from his pocket and read it.
Sunday, September 4th, 1960
Dear Flower,
Could you send me that photograph you took of us in the garden. It’s urgent. I don’t think Edward wants to marry me after all. Actually, it doesn’t really matter because I’m not pregnant now. I must have got my dates muddled. Anyway, I don’t think Edward likes me very much – I can sort of tell. I don’t particularly want to marry him, but I would like a chance to refuse, if you know what I mean. How are you and Julia? Norman says he tried in the barn but Julia wasn’t having any. I want the photo just to show Edward. If it’s a pretty one, I mean if I look quite nice, maybe he’ll like me again. Please don’t forget. Norman says Shebah wore her bandage for weeks, till it fell off with filth. Are you happy? If Edward does vanish I shall just live a normal, sensible life – no more messes or intrigues. This time I mean it. Don’t laugh. Have you read a man called Wallace Stevens?
There is or may be a time of Innocence,
There is never a place. Or if there is no time
If it is not a thing of time, nor of place –
and something and something. There’s a lot more like that. He used to go up and down in lifts in America. He worked in Insurance. Please take care. You could light a candle for me. Blessings, L.
P.S. I’m a bit anxious really. I know I’m not pregnant by Billie, but I may well be by Edward. Isn’t it awful!
Claude read the lines of verse several times without making much sense of them. He decided Lily had probably remembered them wrongly or disordered the punctuation. He folded the letter neatly and rose from his seat and went to the newly bought desk. Opening the right-hand drawer he thrust the letter into the darkness for the woman to find and read. He returned to the house and climbed the stairs to the living-room. He picked up the photograph from off the sofa and propped it on the mantelpiece. Through the window he noticed the cat from next door moving across the yard to lose itself in the long grass of the little garden. Sucking strands of beard in at the crinkled corner of his mouth, he went downstairs.
The photograph remained on the mantelpiece for a long time. It accumulated dust and was bent at one corner. On the right-hand side there were three figures, two of them sitting on the ground and the third slumped scowling on a wrought-iron bench, skirt stretched tight over stout thighs. On the left, isolated, hunched, crouched the fourth figure, not looking into the camera. The sun had gone behind a cloud.
The three friends posed on, marooned in a summer garden.
A Biography of Dame Beryl Bainbridge
Dame Beryl Bainbridge is regarded as one of the greatest and most prolific British novelists of her generation. Consistently praised by critics, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the W. H. Smith Literary Award, and twice won the Whitbread Award for Novel of the Year.
Bainbridge was born in Liverpool in 1932 to Richard Bainbridge and Winifred, née Baines. Her father acquired a respectable income as a salesman but went bankrupt as a result of the 1929 stock market crash. Later in life, she reflected on her turbulent childhood through her writing as a cathartic release. She often said she wrote to make sense of her own childhood.
Despite financial pressures, the Bainbridges sent their children to fee-paying schools. Beryl attended the Merchant Taylors’ girls’ school, and had lessons in German, elocution, music, and tap-dancing. At the age of fourteen, she was expelled, cited as a “corrupting moral influence” after her mother found a dirty limerick among her school things. She then attended the Cone-Ripman School at Tring, Hertfordshire, but left at age sixteen, never earning any formal educational degrees.
She went on to work as an assistant stage manager at the Playhouse Theatre in Liverpool, which would become the basis for one of her Booker-nominated novels, An Awfully Big Adventure, a disturbing story about a teenage girl working on a pr
oduction of Peter Pan. She successfully worked as an actress both before and after her time at the playhouse. As a child, she acted in BBC Radio’s Children’s Hour, and before the birth of her first child, she appeared on the soap opera Coronation Street on Granada Television.
While at the playhouse, Bainbridge met Austin Davies, an artist and set painter. They married in 1954 and had two children together, Aaron and Jojo. They divorced in 1959, and she then moved to London. There, she began a relationship with the writer Alan Sharp, with whom she had a daughter, Rudi. Sharp left Bainbridge at the time of Rudi’s birth.
In 1957, she submitted her novel, Harriet Said, then titled The Summer of the Tsar, to several publishers. They all rejected the manuscript, citing its controversial content—the story of two cruel and murderous teenage girls. She then published two other novels, A Weekend with Claude and Another Part of the Wood. Her real success, however, came when she befriended Anna Haycraft, an editor, writer, and the wife of Colin Haycraft, owner of the Gerald Duckworth publishing house. This friendship marked a major turning point in her writing career. Anna loved Harriet Said, and Gerald Duckworth published it in 1972 to critical acclaim, establishing Bainbridge as a fresh voice on the British literary scene.
After the success of Harriet Said, the Haycrafts put Bainbridge on retainer and found her a clerical job within the company. During her time working for the Haycrafts, Bainbridge wrote several novels, all positively received by critics, some of which were adapted into films—An Awfully Big Adventure, Sweet William, and The Dressmaker.
Bainbridge’s earlier novels were often influenced by her past. The characters from The Dressmaker were based on her aunts, and A Quiet Life drew from her relationship as teenager with a German prisoner of war. Her 1974 novel, The Bottle Factory Outing, was inspired by her real experience working part-time in a bottle-labeling factory.
In 1978, Bainbridge felt she had exhausted her own life as a source of material and turned to history for inspiration, beginning a new era in her career. She discovered a diary entry of Adolf Hitler’s sister-in-law and based her first historical novel, Young Adolf, on Hitler’s supposed vacation to Great Britain. She wrote other books in this genre—Watson’s Apology, Every Man for Himself, The Birthday Boys, Master Georgie, and According to Queeney. At the time of her death, she was writing The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, about a young woman visiting the United States during Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, which was published posthumously.
In addition to her work as a novelist, Bainbridge was also a journalist, frequently contributing to the Evening Standard, and she was the regular theater critic at the Oldie.
Over the course of her career, Bainbridge became a literary celebrity, and was named a Dame of the British Empire in 2000. She remained in the same home on Albert Street in Camden until her death in 2010.
Beryl Bainbridge with her mother Winifred in Formby, Liverpool, circa 1938.
Bainbridge with her husband at the time, Austin Davies, on their wedding day in Liverpool, England, 1954.
Bainbridge with her friend Washington Harold in California, 1962.
Bainbridge at her home in Albert Street with Davies and their two daughters, Jojo and Rudi in 1969.
Bainbridge in the back garden of her home in Camden Town in the 1980s.
Bainbridge speaking at a literary event in the early 1980s.
Bainbridge in a bath chair while spending time with her daughter and grandchildren outside her home in NW1, circa 1988.
Bainbridge in her home in NW1, smoking next to a mannequin of Neville Chamberlain, circa 1992.
Bainbridge in her home at NW1, circa 1992.
Bainbridge with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, where Bainbridge was damed, in 2001.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1967, 1981 by Beryl Bainbridge
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3988-8
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10038
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A Weekend with Claude Page 14