by David Storey
‘Of course I’m a woman. I’m a woman, not a mother.’
‘Don’t you feel.… Don’t you ever want to have children?’
‘Yes. But I’m not so silly as to think that means I have to have them. Children … they just ruin a woman. She becomes just a mother. Just look at a mother when her family have grown up and left her – groping about, wondering why she isn’t a person any more, how she can fill in the day with nothing to do. Oh, Mum! I’m not trying to hurt you. But being a mother, to me, it all seems so hopeless and useless.’
‘Nay, I want to hear what you think,’ she said, labouring, rigid in the chair. ‘I’d like to know.’
‘I’ve said it. I don’t want to say any more.’
She was aching as she sat there. ‘I’ve felt all along, somehow, that you’ve resented Nora in some way. There’ve been times …’
‘I haven’t. She couldn’t be anything else. Most women have to be mothers: there’s nothing else in them. She’s got her children and she talks and talks. I couldn’t ever face that sort of life. It’s just nothing. Useless. She’s just going on and on, doing nothing.’
‘She’s bringing up two grand kiddies.’
‘What for?’
‘Oh, but you’re talking such nonsense, love,’ she sighed. ‘What d’you think I’ve spent all my life doing in bringing you up? You’re a woman. It’s what you are. It’s like saying you don’t believe you’ve two arms and legs. You are a mother, even before you have children. Your body’s enough to tell you that.’
‘I don’t have to be a mother.’
‘Then you’re stunting half your life. You can’t be like a man … not caring.’
‘Then I’ll have the bit of life, and do without the rest.’
‘Margaret.’ She shook her head from side to side. ‘It’s such a great silly thing.’
‘I know, I know.’
She pulled herself to her feet, and lifted the sheets off the clothes-horse. She refolded them, turning the insides to the fire, feeling them with her cheek. The leather thongs on the horse creaked and strained as they took her weight a moment. ‘You mustn’t come to me, then,’ she said, ‘when you find out how you’ve cheated yourself.’
4
When he rolled away he lay back and said nothing. The sky was grey and it was drizzling.
There was an awful sound. It was a train in the cutting. The hoarse panting echoed across the rise of the hill, through the trees, mounting up to me in successive waves of nauseous liberation. It shattered the wood with its steady reverberation, gasping and wheezing in its hidden trough. It seemed as if the monster would never reveal itself, but simply menace with its struggle. Then a white plume of smoke rose above the trees, slowly lengthened, boiling gradually in the sky, and filtering away.
Howarth appeared to be asleep. His eyes were closed, and his forehead glistened with the fine rain. A dribble of water escaped from the corner of his mouth, like colourless blood. His smell was in the heavy dampness of the dead undergrowth and leaves around us.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, and opened his eyes as if measuring the disappearance of the train in his mind. The noise, after its slow accumulation, was sustained; then it began to drain slowly and we heard the heavy clacking of loaded trucks over the rails. The echoing faded into itself; there was the steely slur of the last wheels on the rails, then that too disappeared and the final exhausted panting of the engine gave way to the faint hiss of the drizzle on leaves. ‘Are you all right?’ He turned his head towards me.
‘Yes.’ I sounded irritated, and condemning.
I stared up at the wet leaves and the low scudding greyness. There was a silence and stillness through the wood, which the strange hissing of the rain only intensified. It was an atmosphere of watching and waiting. The water slid off the drooping, still leaves, and dripped slowly into the ground.
‘Aren’t you going to speak?’ he said.
He waited, then went on, ‘You feel independent now. Is that what it’s done for you?’
‘If I’m like that, why did you bother?’
‘You’re a sort of prisoner in your body,’ he said. ‘You don’t seem to recognize your own feelings.’
‘It must be entirely in your own mind. I only feel wet.’
I stood up and buttoned my coat. The sense of physical strangeness vanished, and my body relaxed. The lining of the coat was damp; the dampness was in my hair and on my face.
Howarth pulled himself wearily and clumsily into a sitting position, uncaring.
‘Are you coming?’ I asked.
‘I’m in no hurry.’ He waited a moment, staring round at the foliage, then he slowly stood up.
Globules of rain clung to the fine hairs of his tweed jacket and made it shiny and luminous. He felt the dampness, and took off the coat and shook it violently. A thin spray fell from it. He put it on again and picked up his raincoat from where I’d been lying. Shaking out the creases impassively, he pulled it on.
I led the way towards the cutting, pulling the thin brambles aside, startled by the cold dampness of the ferns and leaves on my bare legs. Howarth trudged sullenly behind, breaking through the undergrowth indifferently. When I reached the side of the cutting and started to climb the fence a man, cycling on the cinders beside the track, looked up in astonishment. Then he turned his head away compulsively, objecting to seeing me in the wood. He was fixed in his task of pedalling. The cycle moved slowly, with a slight rasp of the tyres on the roughness of the ash. He disappeared round the curve of the track, his private momentum unchanged.
Howarth went quickly down the banking, sideways to the slope, dropping on the insides of his feet. The marks of our previous crossing were in the grass, the tufts loosened or pulled from the soil, the long tears of heelmarks.
He waited on the rails while I slowly clambered down. My feet were lost in the immensity of the rails. Climbing ahead again up the opposite side, he stood at the top and watched me hurry the last few yards as the noise of an approaching train intruded into the wood. We stood on the fence and waited nervously.
The black cylinder of the engine nosed round the bend of the cutting, pushing its way into the neat valley on feet of vivid steam. It stalked through the cutting, filling it with a heavy shuddering. The driver didn’t see us. He stared intently through the glass flange at the side of the cab, his shiny hat angled to protect his eyes from the drizzle. The train dragged wearily through, embarrassing in its noise, ignorantly excessive. Each wagon had a heavy, wearied dependence as it rolled by, glistening with wet coal, graded in huge chunks or fine dusty mounds. The guard’s van hissed by on the steel.
Howarth took my arm, and helped me from the fence and down into the hollow of the colliery site. He suggested we shelter in the mouth of the diagonal shaft, and for a moment we stood there, his arm round my waist, looking out at the dismal weather. But I was soon aware of the blackness behind us. At first there was no sound from the darkness. Then the faint, empty running of water echoed in the shaft, of a stream breaking through the decomposed roof and draining into the flooded depths. ‘I’d prefer to walk,’ I said.
He peered behind us at the water running down the side of the shaft floor, and the little debris that it took with it; then he reluctantly led the way out of the hollow on to the path towards the Ponds. ‘Do you think it’s true?’ he said. ‘You acted so coldly up there.’ But he disliked the complaint in his own voice. ‘Do you feel frightened of showing your feelings?’
‘I don’t give myself as easily as most people, that’s all.’
‘You don’t seem to care about it,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t meaning so much making love. I’m slow to place any emotion – even friendliness.’
‘It amounts to the same thing.’ Stopping, he tore a twig from a willow clump; shook it like a whip, and began to pull the leaves off. ‘It goes deeper, too, when it’s like this. There doesn’t seem to be any bodily response in your nature. It’s all closed up inside, and you won�
��t let anyone in.’
‘I’m sorry if I seem like that.’ But the complacency in my voice made him swish his cleaned stick at the grass and the birches.
‘Why did you come this afternoon?’ he said.
‘I don’t think there’s any point in asking, is there?’
I myself felt disillusioned by my own slowness and lack of response. I’d never been so astonishingly aware of it before, and yet I was unashamed: I’d taken something from him, and now he rebelled at not being able to take it back. He rubbed his head fiercely. Then he flung his stick away. The waters of the Ponds gleamed feebly through the foliage, until the path curved round the lower pool and we ascended again, towards the mill. The place was deserted, with a week-day emptiness. The rain drizzled emptily on the ruffled surface.
‘You must feel that you’ve come for nothing,’ he said. ‘It beats me. You must be disappointed.’
‘No – I think it’s you who’s disappointed in yourself.’
‘I didn’t expect you to be so cold. I can’t understand you coming like that. When you knew it was going to be nothing.’
‘I’ve not been cold about it,’ I told him.
‘Indifferent, then. I wish now that we’d never come.’
He saw that he’d probably hurt me, and looked at me with greater irony. ‘What is it, then? What’s wrong?’ he asked, mystified.
‘I’m sorry that you feel like that.’
He thought I might be crying, and put his arm round my shoulders. I winced at his touch, and he pulled his arm away. ‘What is it?’ he said, angered now. ‘You’re not the same two minutes running.’
‘I don’t know. I’m so frightened …’
‘I can’t see why.’
‘I don’t like showing affection, like that.’
‘You don’t have to show how you feel ostentatiously. You can show it privately. Up there in the wood – we were alone.’
‘It didn’t feel like that. It felt … communal. Just like an assault, as if none of it mattered.’
‘No,’ he said sullenly. ‘It’s not like that. You’re wrong.’
‘It’s degrading somehow – showing strong feeling.’
We reached the summit of the upper pool and started down the sandy track to Four Lanes station. ‘We ought to have found a room in town,’ he said. ‘Yet – it feels better, coming out here. Less deliberate.’
‘That’s because you’re married,’ I said with an inexplicably smothered wildness.
He went on walking, and said, ‘Yes. That might be a reason.’ He had curled up into himself, instantly removed and distant.
‘And you told me you weren’t,’ I said, drained by the speed of his submission.
‘You’ve known all along I was married.’ His eyes flared; they were vicious and glistening. ‘What do you think this has been about, for God’s sake?’ He wanted to condemn any distress I might show. ‘Everything … you’re not that blind.’
‘You can’t blame me like that. I’ve relied on you.’
‘Oh no. I can’t accept that. You’ve seen all along, you’ve felt it too. You’ve known all the time I was married. I’ve been wanting to break up my marriage.’
‘And children?’ I said.
‘And children. And children,’ he repeated almost deliriously. We were scarcely moving down the track. Howarth walked very slowly, just taking the edge from his distress. ‘You must have known. Your brother’s told you.’ He looked at me to see if it were true. ‘Why did you come with me today?’
‘I don’t know.’
He quietened. He cut the edge of his shoe through the sand. ‘It must seem to you that I’ve dragged you into my private mess, and now I’m trying to make you sound responsible. And you’ve no idea at all what it means to me.’
‘I can guess what it means. I have some idea of you.’
He sighed disbelievingly. ‘I could cry at the way I’ve behaved. I never imagined I could be so weak.’
‘I don’t want you to go on,’ I said.
The trees began to thin as the track broadened and joined the tarmac lane leading to the station. A tractor was coming down the lane to the right, its exhaust sticking above the hedge and leaving a film of light blue smoke in the thick air. The driver’s head followed it, watching us. He nodded as he came abreast of the track, and Howarth slowed his pace to a bare crawl. We walked between the broad muddy trails of the tractor’s wheels, down towards the station. The rain had slackened and the air was warmer, as if the evening were accumulating heat and drying the ground. When we reached the station yard the tractor was standing in front of a trailer loaded with a tarpaulined farm machine, its spindly red limbs protruding awkwardly over the low roof of the booking office. The driver with the aid of the stationmaster was hooking the trailer’s shaft on to the tractor. ‘Will you give us a hand, cock?’ the labourer called to Howarth.
The sudden demand hardened him. He strode across and, at the labourer’s instruction, lifted the trailer’s heavy arm as the tractor was backed under it. The stationmaster dropped the link and stood back. The farmhand called out and waved his arm. The tractor stuttered rapidly, emitting a dense blue smoke, and the trailer was slowly hauled across the yard towards the lane. Its soft rubber tyres bulged through the pools, and splayed mud behind in two even paths.
Howarth came to the booking hall and we watched the machine towed out of sight. His eyes were glowing and he rubbed his hands together slowly. ‘I’ll take the mud off your shoes,’ he said, looking down at our feet. We went on to the platform and sat down, away from the entrance. He hunted around for a piece of wood, suddenly absorbed and forgetful of the afternoon. He came back with three or four pieces and I took my left shoe off. He cleaned it methodically, round the sole and heel, wiping out the instep on a metal strut of the seat. He did the same with the other shoe, then took them to the far end of the platform and wiped them on clumps of grass on the railway embankment. He held my legs to put them back on. Then he sat down on the seat beside me to clean his own. He was pleased to do it, to make it unnecessary to speak. No sooner had he finished than he went away to find the time of the train.
I went into the waiting room and shivered in front of the empty stove. It felt colder than outside. I took my coat off, straightened my skirt and blouse, combed my hair, and wiped the back of my calves clean of mud. I was remaking my face when Howarth came back. ‘We’ve only twenty minutes to wait,’ he said. ‘Are you cold?’
I let him kiss me and rub my back. ‘What are you going to do now?’ I asked. He looked out of the little dark room at the unprotected platform the other side of the track.
‘That’s what I’ve got to decide now, isn’t it? But I’m glad it’s happened like this.’ He sat down and stared at the yellow-brown wall opposite with its picture of the Lake District.
‘What do you want me to do?’ I said.
He shook his head. Then stared up at me. ‘Do you think I’ve been deceitful?’ he asked.
‘I’ve tried not to think about it. It’s all like doing the actions to the words of another play.’
He smiled strangely at me. ‘I’ve not been very brave at all,’ he decided.
‘How many children have you?’
‘Two.’ He was suddenly indifferent now to my knowing. ‘It used to be three. The eldest died of diphtheria when it was a year old. She was very fragile. Like glass.’ He laughed at the commonplaceness. ‘It makes it all sound insuperable, doesn’t it? I’m not somebody who can just jump in and out of these things. I suppose you were beginning to think I was.’
‘Why have you been wanting to leave your wife?’
‘That’s only part of it.’ His hands fidgeted together. ‘I’m past the stage of making new compromises. If I wanted I could stay with her, and everything would go on as usual. It’d be a terrible business, but we both could manage it. We came to a tentative sort of agreement a couple of years ago. But at that time I thought we were doing it for the sake of the children. Now, they’re old en
ough to sense what it’s all about. I reckon they must have known all along. They even tend to be derisive about it at times. Even cynical. And Sheila’s only thirteen. Brian’s nine.’ He looked up at me. ‘It’s foul, isn’t it? It’s unbelievable.’ His hands brushed cleansingly against his thighs.
The rain dripped from the canopy of the station, but the sky had lightened, and the landscape beyond the station had a watered brilliance. ‘I don’t think you should leave her,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you can.’
He looked at me helplessly, demanding some consideration. ‘I always think of your family life as being too successful,’ he said. ‘Too shut-in on itself and secure. Families to me are just like vicious animals, radiant with solicitude, and affection until you touch them. Then they rear up like crazed beasts. They seem to be the worst parasites of the lot, living off everything around them that they can: neighbours, jobs, friends, anything. I know … I’m not the best authority on family matters. In my experience they’ve destroyed far more than they ever created.’
‘That’s something more than bitterness …’ I said, my feelings tumbling down in front of him.
‘This afternoon’s meant a lot to me, Margaret. I thought I was all lost. Washed-up.’
‘How does it make it any better? Everything’s far worse now.’
‘I can have a sort of self-respect about it. Can’t I?’ He approved of himself nervously, his hands still clasped together. ‘It can’t have been easy for you to come with me today … You’ve got a peculiar sense of loyalty.’
‘But … I don’t know.…’ I covered my face with my hands.
‘Margaret, I’ve to start being real somewhere. I feel relieved by it all.… It’s made me feel I might get something back, even yet. However little it is.’
‘But I can’t go on seeing you when you’re like this at home. Your children – you can’t just cut them off, like that. It’s cowardly.’
He looked at me cruelly, draining his whole face with his breath. ‘I’m not a coward. If I stay with them I am.’