Watson’s Apology

by Beryl Bainbridge

  He told her that he had no recollection of his father at all, and that he had seen his mother but once in his entire life. He began to kick at Mrs Gallagher’s fender as if it had done him an injury.

  ‘If you had stayed with your mother,’ Anne said, ‘you would not be here today.’

  ‘If the Bank had prospered,’ he replied, ‘you too might be somewhere else.’

  ‘It’s an ill wind,’ she murmured.

  In referring to the Bank, he had fully intended it as a romantic statement. He was shaken at the thought that they might have missed each other on the road of life. He would have gone on to hold her hand if she hadn’t butted in about ill winds. He was so disconcerted by her remark that for a moment he misconstrued the meaning of it and thought she implied that it was a misfortune for her to have been blown into Mrs Curran’s drawing-room in Marlborough Street. He found it difficult to show his feelings for her. He was like a barometer which was unable to give a correct reading. All that was needed, he told himself, was an adjustment, an altering of position, and nature, abhorring a vacuum, would cause the mercury to rise and the instrument to function. Courtship, being a social phenomenon, was surely a matter of display. There had to be witnesses to the event, observers, relations constantly commenting on the activities of the courting couple. Anne Armstrong and himself were too solitary. They had only themselves to fall back on. He was inhibited by a lack of numbers. How peculiar he felt, miserable and happy by turns. The embarrassment of being with her was almost as painful as the thought of living life without her.

  He began to describe the school at Stockwell, in particular the newly planted poplars by the railings.

  ‘I like poplars,’ she said. ‘Especially if the wind is blowing.’

  He told her that Stockwell, for the moment, was a pleasant suburb, although unfortunately it was beginning to be built up. It lay between Clapham and Brixton, neither of which were fashionable districts. As he had mentioned in his letters his salary was as yet small, but that would be remedied by time. The reputation of the school grew term by term.

  She thought of spacious parsonages set in gardens full of fruit trees and wondered out loud whether he wouldn’t be happier earning his living as the Rector of some quiet and prosperous country parish.

  ‘I would rather be head master of a good school than Archbishop of Canterbury,’ he protested. He knew he was unsuited to the clerical life, but then he was unsuited to so many things.

  ‘When I was ordained priest,’ he said, ‘by Dr Law, Bishop of Bath and Wells, I was appointed curate at St Mary’s, Huish Episcopi, in Langport, Somerset. It was my first and last curacy and I got it through influence. One of Law’s sons had been a pupil with me at Burney’s school in Greenwich. I was nothing but a dog’s-body in Langport.’

  ‘I have never been to Somerset,’ Anne said.

  ‘When I was not riding about the countryside in all weathers,’ said Watson, ‘or examining those poor workhouse wretches in the Catechism, I was endeavouring to coach the Rector’s four, equally stupid, sons.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said, with feeling.

  ‘I had formed a friendship with a man called George Stukeley. But for him I would have been utterly miserable.’

  ‘How fortunate,’ she said. Already she hated George Stukeley.

  ‘But when it came to it,’ said Watson, ‘Stukeley failed to understand me.’

  Instantly she felt more cheerful. She said brightly, ‘It isn’t wise to rely on anybody.’

  ‘One night,’ Watson said, ‘I was coming home on foot, after baptising an infant who was dying of the croup, when I thought I heard an animal bleating in the darkness. But it was a young woman, crouched by the wall of her father’s cottage, half crazed from a beating she had received. I wrapped my coat round her and carried her to the vicarage.’

  ‘How dreadful,’ Anne murmured, and now she hated the young woman more than George Stukeley.

  ‘She was a hefty girl,’ said Watson, ‘and I felt as if I was carrying the burdens of the world.’ He did not tell Anne that the girl had been almost naked and that when he had lifted her in his arms her bare breast had bounced against his wrist and it was as though his skin had been seared by fire. ‘I had not a thought in my head,’ he said, ‘but that I was doing God’s work. At last I was gathering a sheep to the fold. I carried her up the vicarage path, past the winter cabbages, and kicked at the door. Unfortunately the Reverend Henslow was away for the night. Mrs Henslow came down in her nightgown. She looked at me as if she had never seen me before. I was dripping wet and the girl in my arms was uttering shrill little cries. Mrs Henslow reminded me of the girl’s reputation and of the four innocent souls asleep in the room above. She told me to go away.’

  ‘How uncharitable,’ Anne said, though inwardly she approved of the Rector’s wife. Watson had surely gone too far, taking that beaten girl in his arms.

  ‘There being nowhere else to go,’ said Watson, ‘I crossed over the road to the church. As I picked my way between the tombstones I shouted to the dead that here was someone alive and suffering. It was after midnight, you understand, and the elm trees by the boundary wall rattled as the rain swept down. I laid the girl beside the christening font with a purple cushion beneath her head. All night I stayed with her, cradling her feet in my hands and chafing them lest the blood freeze in her veins. I hadn’t had my supper and I offered my hunger up to the Lord, but my stomach continued to rumble.’

  ‘What a business!’ said Anne. If she had to listen to this Good Samaritan nonsense much longer she knew she would lose her temper.

  ‘The next morning, her father, informed by every Tom, Dick and Harry in the parish, came for her. The villagers were waiting for us in the lane, gawping as we came out. She was still wearing my coat, and she had a black eye. Both her lips were split and bloody. She ducked through a gap in the churchyard wall and jogged away down the stubble field without a backward glance. When the Rector came home, he accused me of naiveté. He said the girl should have been left where she was. Her father would have fetched her in before day-break. I mentioned the weather, the deluge. He said the climate had nothing to do with it.’

  The Rector, thought Anne, was a sensible fellow. She forced herself to look sympathetically at Watson, but it was a terrible effort.

  ‘George Stukeley,’ said Watson, ‘went even further. He said I had acted out of self-importance. It was obvious he had never understood me. Since then I have come to believe that true friendship, compounded as it must be of imagination and tenderness, can only be found with a woman.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said eagerly, ‘yes, I think you are right.’

  Now that he had found his ideal, he knew he could lay bare his heart. ‘My real interest,’ he admitted, ‘is in a literary career. It is, of course, a precarious occupation. These days, critics deal in destruction. If they could, they would burn the author at the stake.’

  ‘They will not burn you,’ she assured him. There was something very dramatic about her. He couldn’t help noticing the demure set of her bloodless mouth and the contradiction in the bold, almost insolent gaze of her glittering eyes. It seemed to him that when she looked at him directly the melancholy little room with its dusty curtains and dark linoleum was swept by flame. He could have sworn there was actually a smell of charred wood in the air.

  ‘It’s not just a question of ability,’ he said, ‘but of getting on with people. Some men can charm the birds off the trees. I’m not one of them. I suffer from too much independence of spirit. I’m not tolerant of people.’

  ‘We are very alike,’ she cried enthusiastically. ‘I have always been my own worst enemy. Everyone has always told me so.’

  He was alarmed at her words. He didn’t need her to be like him. ‘I don’t expect much financial return from my writing,’ he said. ‘However, what little I may earn I shall share with you.’

  She stared into the fire and felt chilled – she had always had so little of everything. He didn’t
attempt to kiss her, or even to hold her hand, and she was disappointed. At first she thought it was because he lacked ardour, and then because he didn’t think it necessary, not at this moment. She found him very masculine and overbearing – he crossed his legs and swung his foot up and down in a casual manner. During their conversation there was an occasion when she didn’t instantly grasp what he meant, and immediately he grew impatient with her, as if he had known her for a long time. Already she believed she loved him. At this moment she was not concerned whether he loved her or not. He admired her, she could tell, and that was sufficient; she had always considered admiration as important as love. She would soon cure him of standing on one leg.

  They were married four days later, by special licence, at St Mark’s Church. Anne wore the same grey dress she had worn to Quin’s house. Her aunt, visited by an hysterical Olivia, had sent round a more suitable gown of brown merino, only slightly stained at collar and cuffs. Anne had promptly returned it. She wanted no hand-me-down favours from that quarter.

  She was given away by Quin, who was also the best man. Her brother, Edwin, was ill and it was thought unwise for him to make the journey from Tyrone. An elderly acquaintance of Quin’s, a teacher of the pianoforte, was to have escorted her up the aisle, but when it came to it he was found to be drunk and unable to walk in a straight line. He was left outside the church, slumped against the railings.

  Olivia, quite alone, sat in a middle pew, her sobs rolling round the empty church.

  ‘She is moved at the happiness that awaits you,’ explained Mrs Quin, when signing the register in the vestibule. She is appalled at the prospect before her, thought Anne, nodding in agreement.

  After the ceremony was over, two hackney cabs waited to take them to an hotel near the harbour. By some mischance Anne went ahead with Quin and his mother, and Watson found himself left behind in charge of the music teacher and Olivia. Both had to be assisted into the remaining cab. The music teacher, scooped up off the railings, was in danger of vomiting over his boots and had to be persuaded to travel with his head stuck out of the window.

  At the hotel Watson had booked a room for the wedding party. Cuts of cold meat and a cold apple pie were laid out on a side table decorated with artificial flowers. No expense is being spared, thought Anne, as the champagne was brought in. She was irritated that Olivia was too distressed to take advantage of the food. Perhaps when no one was looking some of the meat could be hidden in a napkin and given her to take home.

  Mrs Quin was disappointed that there wasn’t a bride’s cake. She had offered to provide the couple with a small reception at her own house but Watson had refused. There was a steamer leaving for Liverpool at seven o’clock and he wanted to be as close to the dock as possible.

  Toasts were drunk, and Quin made a speech in which he spoke affectionately of his friend. He said that Watson had already made his mark in literary and academic circles, and now that he had taken a wife he could not fail to further his reputation. She would watch over him as he laboured at his desk, ensuring that atmosphere of tranquillity and order which was essential to a man of letters.

  Watson seemed indifferent to what was being said about him. During Quin’s optimistic portrayal of his future he occupied himself with scratching the ears of a black-and-white dog which had run in from the street. His grandfather had given him a dog when he was a child. It had followed him everywhere. If he was in the schoolroom it had waited in the lane, sprawled out in the mud like a dead thing. When he had run his hand down its spine, its hindquarters had shivered uncontrollably. He felt curiously empty and could not look at Anne Armstrong. Her sister was pulling the petals off an artificial rose. She was sitting with her back to the window and he could see behind her the branch of a tree jerking against a patch of grey sky. He too was at the mercy of the elements: if he did not bend with the storm he would snap in half.

  Anne told Mrs Quin she would write to her. Mrs Quin, in return, promised to visit Olivia whenever possible.

  ‘She is a difficult woman,’ said Anne. ‘We have never got on.’

  ‘You must not worry about her,’ advised Mrs Quin. ‘We are none of us as indispensable as we imagine.’

  Anne believed she had stopped worrying about Olivia. She told herself that her sister was no longer her responsibility. From now on Edwin would have to contend with her. She was far more concerned about the imminent farewell – she doubted whether she could muster up the tears expected at such a moment.

  But, when the time came for Watson to settle his bill and she was required at last to look Olivia in the eye, her sister’s face was so blank with grief – the lines of discontent and petulance quite smoothed away – and her nose so pathetically flushed from crying, that instantly she broke down and took Olivia into her arms. She could not bear anyone else to see the stains on the bodice of her sister’s dress. ‘You must sponge your dress with warm water,’ she whispered. ‘If the marks are too stubborn you must try vinegar.’ Her own tears dripped down her cheeks and leaked into her mouth.

  They walked the short distance to the pier. The gutters were filled with refuse. It had gone five o’clock and land and sky had merged into darkness. The gas lights blazed along the edge of the quay. There was so much noise, so many pockets of light and dark, so many people hurrying in the same direction that Olivia grew confused and more childlike than ever. Just then the train connection from Dublin drew into the station: a cloud of steam, sulphurous yellow and stitched with sparks, rolled across the black sky. Olivia lagged behind, holding tightly to Anne’s hand as they struggled against the wind towards the landing stage.

  ‘I’ll send for you very soon,’ cried Anne. ‘I will, I will.’

  ‘I want –’ cried Olivia, but what she wanted was torn away by the wind.

  Watson strode ahead, keeping pace with the porter who carried Anne’s trunk on his shoulder. He had refused to hand over his own bag because his books were tied to it. He said he couldn’t trust them to be transported by anyone but himself. The black-and-white dog trotted at his heels. There was nothing in Anne’s trunk but old clothes, a miniature of her father and the oyster shell which had gathered dust on the mantel-shelf in Great Britain Street. When she had taken it down, Olivia had said, ‘That is mine. You’re a thief.’ ‘Be quiet,’ Anne had shouted. ‘I will take what I want.’ It was too late to give it back.

  They reached the departure point. Olivia was not permitted to go any further. The sisters clung together as though drowning. They could hear the slap of the river as it heaved against the granite slabs of the harbour wall. We are surrounded by strangers, thought Anne, looking over her sister’s shoulder at Watson and his friends.

  ‘Make sure they take you home in a cab,’ she whispered to Olivia. ‘Mind you insist. They can afford it.’ The dog ran round them in a circle, snapping at their ankles.

  ‘It’s time,’ said Mrs Quin. ‘Your husband is waiting.’

  How absurd, thought Anne. Then she straightened Olivia’s bonnet and draped the shawl more securely about her shoulders, and backed away from her, her arm stretched out and her fingers clawing the air as if she was sliding into an abyss.

  ‘Goodbye, goodbye,’ called Quin and his mother.

  ‘Bon voyage,’ shouted the pianoforte teacher, waving his hat from side to side like a flag.

  Watson assisted Anne up the gangway – she stopped and looked back. Below her, she saw Olivia’s upturned face, white as chalk under the artificial light, her black lips mouthing a farewell. The world slithered up and down. In the desolate streets the houses climbed, lamps blooming in the windows, towards the windswept sky. Watson pulled at her elbow. Almost before Anne had set foot on the deck the tears had dried in her eyes and she was thinking of the future.

  They had supper on board an hour later. Both were hungry and neither of them felt queasy.

  ‘I have never been seasick in my life,’ said Anne with satisfaction.

  Watching her husband devouring his grilled chops, she re
marked, ‘There is plenty of time. No one is going to remove the plate before you have finished.’

  He was taken aback at her criticism. He pushed his elbows closer to his sides and held his knife and fork as if they would burst into flames.

  When the boat had left the harbour they went below. The cabin was small and airless and the floor vibrated with the noise of the engines.

  ‘I am afraid you will not be very comfortable,’ he said, ducking his head to avoid the swing of the safety lamp which hung from the ceiling. They were scarcely beyond the Bar, and already the boat was bucking and pitching as it fought the wind.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I think of it as an adventure.’

  He was not sure what he should do next. Women were so fragile. He imagined she should rest, and yet he felt it would be heartless to leave her alone when so recently wrenched from both country and sister – even a sister she disliked.

  There was nowhere to sit. Her trunk and his bag stood side by side at the foot of the narrow bed. His books, tied with string, were attached to the handle of his portmanteau. Squatting, he untied the string and selected a volume bound in green cloth. ‘It is mine,’ he said, standing up and showing her the cover. ‘That is to say, I wrote it.’

  She was impressed and asked him to read her something from it. Still wearing her bonnet, and clutching the ends of her shawl, she looked at him expectantly.

  After a decent display of reticence, he began, ‘“He whose dead soul seeks not to be enlarged”,’ and frowned. ‘I have read it wrongly,’ he said. ‘I’m too nervous.’

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Pretend I am not here.’

  Clearing his throat, he started again.

  He whose dead soul swells not to be enlarged

  From sensual bondage, and to be relieved

  From mists of ignorance and direful stench

  Of the world’s common sewer, is but fit

  To worship Plutus, hug vile yellow dirt

  And wrap himself in filth. Let such a thing

  Go quench the little feeling nature gave –