by David Storey
‘Fulfilment?’
‘Of all those demands … surely you know. Haven’t you ever felt all those demands made on you to marry? The obligation.’
‘Was there an obligation in marrying her?’
‘There must be in all marriage. It’s when something like this happens that the obligation is suddenly ineffective, suddenly amounts to nothing. There’s always some higher demand that either materializes or doesn’t.’
‘It sounds a rotten way of looking at it. It makes it seem hopeless when you talk like that.’
‘As you like.… But all the same, with you I don’t feel any obligation.’
‘It’s a kind of personal greed,’ I went on. ‘As though marriage is something only to get things out of, not to put anything into.’
‘Well, that’s the usual excuse. But marriage doesn’t mean much really. You’re made to think it does. With me – all I’m trying to do is to count more than I have done in my own life.’
‘What sort of love do you have for me?’
He rubbed his hand across his forehead in a fit of nervous concentration. ‘I can’t say. I’m not used to thinking about it as coolly as this.’
‘But what difference is there between me and your wife? Physically there can’t be much. If anything, she must be better looking.’
‘She is,’ he said. ‘But you affect me in every way. She only affected me in some. I feel more virtuous somehow with you … is that any clearer?’
‘Don’t you like looking too closely at me?’
‘I’ve looked more closely at you than at anyone. If you ask me what attracts me most – then I reckon it’s the difference there seems to be between your body and your mind. They’re like two separate things in you. I can feel it tremendously when I’m loving you. It’s a real thing.…’
‘You’re always exaggerating that, and it can’t be true,’ I said harshly, afraid of his struggle to approach me.
‘You asked me,’ he said simply, resigned. ‘If you do know what it means then you must feel more for me than I thought.’ He watched me with sudden care, hopefully, afraid and smiling. His concern stiffened his smile into that clown-grimace.
‘At times you look at me so scornfully that I wonder if I count at all.’
He laughed out, gaily and threateningly, misunderstanding. His laughter fevered and emptied him. ‘What do you feel’s going to happen with the divorce?’ I asked.
‘Nay, forget it.’ He was still playful. ‘You’ve left it with me till now, so don’t suddenly start interfering.’ He wanted to be mild, but his expression was hard and brutal.
‘You’ll have to tell me,’ I said quietly. ‘If you don’t tell me I shall leave you.’
He quietened, gazing disbelievingly at me, nearly smiling, but realizing my need to shock him. ‘You’re turning me over and over,’ he said. ‘Like a toy. Examining all the crevices, the details, how the eyes work, and why it squeaks when you press its belly. Do you think I should submit to that?’
‘Have you any choice?’
‘I shan’t explain it. No,’ he said, flushing, and turning his look away. His expression hardened.
‘I’ll take this as what it means,’ I warned him.
‘You can take it how you like.’ The blood rushed into his face as if it burned him. ‘I’m not giving in as easily as that, now or any other time. You can do what you like about it.’
‘I shall leave you if you don’t tell me.’
He knew I wanted to infuriate him, to make him submit. He was deriding me now with his secret and with my fear. ‘Well you go, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll never look back at you. I can tell you that.’
He watched this exaggeration of ourselves as I packed my suitcase. I did it coldly, but still raging inwardly at my helplessness and his insistence on it. His anger grew as he watched in his stubborn silence. It was that final hardness that drove us apart, his eyes glinting at me as though I’d betrayed all that I’d promised.
When I walked down to Camden High Street I expected to hear him coming after me, not hurrying, but strolling with that slow gait, suggesting to me how ineffectual I could be. But there was no sign of him. I began to encourage myself towards the completeness of this sudden and unexpected break. I was too surprised to think. I caught a 68 bus down into Bloomsbury, noting the details of the journey with great care, and choosing a hotel in Cartwright Gardens as if it itself were a reflection of my sudden pride. I went to bed early, determined on sleep and oblivion.
I was wakened at eight, relaxed and feeling no remorse, only vaguely anxious as to what the parting had meant. Such simple actions always deceived me: my life seemed to have been made up of occurrences whose simplicity had misled me as to their meaning. I was curious about him, though coolly, waiting for a message that would explain everything.
At work I expected him to ring up. But I was nervously jealous of this strange independence. I wanted to tell my acquaintances in the office all about it, as if it were the achievement of some long secret ambition. It was a physical lightness, as if leaving him had freed me of a heavy load: my back was straighter and my fingers raced over the typewriter keys, as though they had been relieved of a binding pressure. I made a date with a girl in the office to go out that evening: we went into the West End to the Lyons Grill for dinner and then to a cinema. But I was bored by my own sex: I kept looking round for Howarth, convinced he’d appear at any moment. When each minute passed and he didn’t come I grew increasingly bored, and was aching; I hated my friend for not realizing that to me she was Howarth. I couldn’t accept her as herself. In the dark beside me she was confused with him. I was aware of him as a part of me, like my own legs and arms, all our senses shared. But she was foreign. The evening extended on all sides into that vast emptiness again, the emptiness of the cinema and the blankness of the film.
The following day a different, unknown weight descended on me. My immediate elation had vanished completely overnight. And this weight was more oppressive: there was no one to share it with.
The routine no longer had a purpose: before it had been a preoccupation, a relief; but now it was boredom itself, dolorous, ineffective, embalmed in its uselessness, cold with its uninvolvement of me. The letters, the contracts we had to type – everything we did was a yawning, shuffling silliness that was carried out with us as its apparently inanimate components. The typewriter was a disease, sprouting from my fingertips like a growth, and contaminating sheet after sheet of paper. Without love. Yet when I was called to the phone I was calm.
All Howarth gave me was the message. He said nothing about himself. He read the letter that had arrived that morning. It was only a note, he said, to tell me that my father expected to arrive at Kings Cross in the evening and wanted me to meet him there. I told Howarth I would bring him to the flat, but when I asked him what he thought he rang off.
My father looked already lost in the crowd as it swirled towards the barrier: his small, stocky figure resentful in the parade of bodies. He stared self-consciously towards the people on the other side, as if afraid of recognizing me among them. He seemed now to have all the bewildering warmth and strangeness he’d possessed when I’d seen him at the pit.
As he pressed his way aggressively through the barrier, he caught sight of me waving at him and his face lit up with immediate pleasure; then he quickly looked away, hiding himself. We shook hands clumsily, uncertain of what was expected, of what we should feel.
‘How’re you keeping, then?’ he asked shyly, his voice so strange with its northern accent that I scarcely recognized it. I was afraid of him, but happy, relieved that he was alone.
‘How’re you keeping?’ he said again. ‘You got my note, then? I wasn’t sure it’d get down here in time.’ He walked quickly towards the street as if we had an immediate appointment outside.
‘How’s my mother?’ I asked him.
‘She’s all right.’ He paused and looked blankly at the evening crowds of Euston Road. It was almost dark and the l
amps were early and still red, like rows of crude fruit racing to the distance. ‘Which way do we go?’ he said. ‘It’s the first time for thirty year I’ve bin down here, you know.’
I began walking up towards St Pancras church, talking with him about the family, not caring why he had come down, what it was he needed. He was satisfied with the warmness, yet strained by his first rushing impression. The train had dazed him: he hid his curiosity, staring straight ahead, talking rapidly and intimately, content with the strong feeling between us. I was continually surprised by the strangeness of his northern accent.
He quietened when we stood in the bus queue, opposite St Pancras church. ‘Oh aye,’ he reminded himself, hesitant after his stream of family talk and suddenly feeling himself under my care. ‘Are you living close by, then?’
‘It’s only a threepenny ride away.’ We were both silent, urgently aware of the dark traffic and the people around us.
‘Did you want to come back home?’ I said. ‘Or would you rather get a hotel first?’ He had no case, but carried a plastic mac rolled round something in his hand.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know how long I’m staying. I thought I might stay Sat’day, you know.…’ He preoccupied himself with his surroundings.
‘What did you come down for, Dad?’
‘Well – I thought we might have a talk, lass.’ He was watching the bus anxiously as it drew up, and with deliberate politeness ushered me inside first. ‘Will … this chap be at home, then?’ he said, wiping his hand across his nose.
‘I’m not sure. He might be out.’ I was about to tell him of the quarrel, but I kept it back, dismissing it in my own mind as of no consequence now. My only impulse was to take him to the flat, to let him see how confident and undismayed I was, how successful everything had been. ‘Didn’t you want to see Howarth, Dad?’
‘I don’t mind.’ He watched the drabness of the buildings with a nervous indifference. We began to wait for the bus to reach Camden. Inconsequential phrases repeated themselves in my mind, as if I were searching for some easy conversation. I prayed that Howarth hadn’t taken malice and gone out. I seemed to be busily talking to myself.
He was angry, and afraid of the district, of its bustling crowds, the foreigners of Inverness Street market and the accents: it was all unreliable, the sounds alone weren’t trustworthy. ‘All them spivs,’ he said, submitting to it, but drawing up hate and ridicule into himself at its strangeness.
Howarth was expecting us. The flat was very tidy, and he was serious and polite.
‘Hello, Mr Thorpe,’ he said, the moment my father went into the room, and strode forward and shook hands confidently. My father was prepared to submit: the bustle of London had already wearied and betrayed him. He was reassured, almost relieved, by Howarth’s confidence, and by the confident tidiness of the flat.
‘I’m going to leave you two to talk a while,’ Howarth said. ‘I can imagine why you’ve come, Mr Thorpe, so I shan’t get in your way for an hour or so. I’ll be back around eight, and we’ll see if we can have some sort of meal together.’
My father murmured his agreement, uninterested, and Howarth went out. He didn’t look at me.
We listened to his feet descending slowly, sensibly, to the street. My father was uncomfortable in the room: the bed itself might have distressed him. Subconsciously he avoided it, sitting across the room with his back to it as if it were another person. ‘I wouldn’t mind a pot of tea, Margaret,’ he said quietly.
He couldn’t bear to be alone. I was only a minute in the kitchen, but he followed me. He’d taken off his jacket and was in the green pullover I’d once knitted him. He wanted to be intimate and matter-of-fact. He watched me put on the kettle and prepare the tea things: he didn’t look at the place at all.
‘You’ve got two rooms?’ he asked.
‘Yes. We manage all right. We share a sort of bathroom downstairs.’
‘Oh aye.’ He nodded, pained but already prepared for any material surprise.
‘Do you know why I’ve come down?’ he asked with sudden, slow formality.
I sat down at the table, arranging the tray, and he sat opposite me, leaning on the table edge.
‘Mrs Howarth came to see us,’ he said. ‘She came to see your mother and me.’
‘What about?’ For the first time I was embarrassed, and he was relieved by it.
‘She asked us if we could do anything.… She doesn’t hold any grievance against you. But she needs him back, she said.’ He was aware of the emotions involved, but was determined not to be put off. His calmness admonished me; he stared at me with scarcely any concern, blinking with a vague tiredness. ‘I got off work to come down,’ he said.
‘She’s written to Howarth,’ I told him, ‘and said much the same thing. She won’t admit to losing him, to letting him go. I think she’s wanting to make him suffer for it.’
‘Nay, I don’t think it’s ought like that, Margaret,’ he said. ‘She’s a genuine woman, I could tell. She said she’d do ought to get him back. But she wasn’t blaming anybody. As far as I can make out she takes all the blame on herself.… I don’t know.’
He spoke as if he’d discussed what he’d say a great deal before he came down. There was my mother’s sentiment in his voice, perhaps even Michael’s. He leaned heavily on the table, secure in his righteousness. ‘I don’t know what you’re hoping to gain, living like this,’ he said, allowing his first aggression to fade.
‘His divorce is being heard soon,’ I replied. ‘Then there’ll be an end to all this, thank God, I shall have to go up …’
‘Nay, I don’t think so.… Hasn’t this chap told you? She’s withdrawn her petition or whatever.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ he added, watching me acutely and wearied by my look of shock. ‘You can see what a position you’re in now. Why don’t you come away, once and for all, and leave them both to it? You can’t step between a man and his wife. You just don’t know what goes on, what it is they have between them.’
‘You know it’s not as simple as that.’
He suspected that my agitation was a sure sign of my doubt. Standing up he turned off the already steaming kettle, and showed at last his full concern. ‘There’s nowt in it for you, lass. She’s not going to divorce him, and he can’t get one without her consent on it.’ He sat down to watch the effect of his words, his hands splayed on the table.
‘She knows Howarth won’t go back.… So she’s making as much trouble as she can.…’
‘But this chap,’ he said, still afraid of mentioning him directly, ‘he’s not going to wait for her if he’s got ought about him. If he’s a man. He’ll have to go back. I’ve no doubt on that. And neither has she.’
‘He won’t go back.’
‘Nobody can ever think ought of you for living like this,’ he said. ‘People don’t look at muck if they can help it.’
‘I can get the respect that I want. I’m respected down here.’
‘Aye. You’ll be running from place to place like a couple of filthy dogs,’ he said, full of hate.
‘That’s not the life we have down here,’ I told him quietly.
‘Here? But what sort of life is here, pray? It’s the back of beyond – I saw the sort of people as I came up. The scum of the earth. That’s what you’re living with. Just look at their faces.… Is that what you want?’
‘There are other places. We don’t have to live here.’
‘Aye, and what places are those? Just like this one. What decent people are going to have you amongst them? You’ll be dirt. Just dirt to them. What if you have a baby?’
‘His wife won’t always be like this. In seven years …’
‘In seven years! Bloody hell, Margaret, just what do you think people are? For Christ’s sake try and act like a grown woman. In seven years … in two years you’ll be just a wreck, a washed-up bit of rubbish.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’ve seen his wife. She’s a determined wom
an if I know ought. You don’t seem to realize she’s got all her life at stake an’ all. And her kiddies’.’ He rubbed the edge of the table with the palm of his hand, watching me as if this insignificant action would persuade me. He did it unconsciously. ‘Any road, Margaret, if you don’t reckon that that’s ought,’ he said with difficulty, ‘you might have some consideration for us. For your mother, if nobody else. God knows … we’ve never demanded much in the way of what you did with your life. This’s the first thing where we’ve had to ask you not to go on. It was your mother who was wanting to come down here. But I wouldn’t let her … But listen, you can’t go on ignoring your family like this, Margaret. We even let you have some time down here, we didn’t butt in, just in the hope you’d see some sense. We waited … but nothing seems to have happened.’
He hated pleading for himself. He was suddenly young with his earnestness: it gave his face a youthfulness, and he stared at me as if it were a third person he was speaking to. ‘I’d nearly to hit our Michael to stop him coming down here to settle this Howarth once and for all. I could fair kill him mysen. I mean that …’
‘Did she tell you she’d stopped the divorce? Or have you only heard?’
‘She told us. I thought you’d have known. I’m surprised you haven’t heard. I am.’
He was still waiting for me: the noise of other arguments and conversations penetrated from the well of the landings, suddenly threatening and resounding. My father was tired and pale. ‘Haven’t you listened to what I’ve said?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And … and you’re carrying on.’
‘I have to, Dad. It’s not as simple and as one-sided as you make it. There’s so much more. So much now.’
He nodded, agreeing quickly. ‘What is there?’ he said.
‘Howarth’s everything I’ve got, Dad.’
‘He can’t be …’ He shook his head, uncertainly. ‘Man or woman, you’ve got to give up far bigger things in your life than that. Believe me, if it’s only something like this you’ve got to give up in the whole of your life then you’ll be a lucky woman.’