Pridefully she marched on, though her breath was hurting in her chest and her hand without its glove – they were somewhere in her shoulder bag but she couldn’t stop to find them – was freezing into a claw on the case handle. Her arm felt as if it was being dragged from her shoulder. It wasn’t clothes that made her case heavy, but some books Sheila had asked her to bring. Every forty paces – she began to count – she swapped her case and shoulder bag from hand to hand, and that gave a few moments of relief. She fixed her eyes on the back of the rumpled pinstriped jacket. Once or twice, on the zebra crossings, he looked back to check for her. Luckily his bare feet seemed to slow him down somewhat, probably because he had to keep an eye out for what he might be walking in. There were quite a few people on the streets, even though the shops were closed; sometimes he held back to let a crowd go by, perhaps because he was afraid of someone stepping on his toes. Perversely Hilary started slowing down too whenever this happened. She was damned now if she wanted to catch up with him. Even if he stopped to wait for her, now, she thought that she would stop too and wait, as if the distance between them had become a fixed relationship, an invisible rigid frame of air connecting them and holding them apart in the same grip.
She thought she recognised the streets that they were walking through. When their father had driven Sheila over with her things at the start of the autumn term, Hilary had come with them; she had wanted to be able to picture where Sheila was, when she wasn’t at home. This shopping area was on a hill behind the city centre: it had seemed lively and fashionable, with tiny boutiques, cafés, a department store whose long glass windows were stuck with brown and yellow paper leaves. She had seen Sheila taking it all in from her front seat in the van, satisfied with her choice, impatient to be left alone to explore. At home they could only ever get lifts in to Cambridge every so often, and anyway their shopping there was dogged by waiting parents, ready with ironic comments on whatever the girls chose to buy with their money. Dimly in the dusk now, Hilary could see the Victorian Gothic university tower where it ought to be, over to her right. Manor Hall residence where Sheila had a room should be somewhere off to the left, up past a little triangle of green grass. The pinstriped jacket struck off left, and Hilary was relieved. They must arrive soon, and she would be able to put her case down, and be rid of her dreadful companion.
The road he took didn’t lead up past any triangle of grass but downhill; it was wide, busy with fast through traffic but not with people. They left the shops behind and it seemed all at once to be completely night; the pavement ran alongside a daunting high wall to their left. The steep hills and old high walls of this city were suddenly sinister and not quaint, as if they hid dark prisons and corruptions in their folds. Hilary followed the pinstriped jacket in a grim, fixed despair. In spite of the cold she was sweating, and her chest was racked. She thought that catastrophe had overtaken her. She had made an appalling mistake when she meekly followed this man out of the bus station, like a trusting child, like an idiot. The only form of dignity left to her was not to falter, or make a worse fool of herself screaming and running, not to break the form of the rigid relationship in which they moved. She thought he might be taking her somewhere to kill her with a knife. She wouldn’t say a word to save her life; she might swing at him with her grandfather’s suitcase. Or she imagined drugs, which she didn’t know anything about: perhaps drug addicts recruited new associates by bundling strangers into their den and injecting them with heroin. She didn’t ever imagine rape or anything of that sort, because she thought that as a preliminary to that outrage there would have to be some trace of interest in her, some minimal sign of a response to her, however disgusted.
The pinstriped jacket crossed the road, darting between cars. Following, Hilary hardly cared if she was hit. He struck off up a narrow precipitous hill with tall toppling houses facing on to the pavement on either side. Because of the effort of climbing she had her head down and almost walked into him when he stopped outside a front door. He pushed the door and it swung open. The house inside was dark.
—In here, he said, and led the way.
Hilary followed.
In the hall he switched on a light: a bare bulb hung from the ceiling. The place was desolate: ancient wallpaper washed to colourlessness hung down in sheets from the walls. Even in her extremity, though, she could tell that this had been an elegant house once. City lights twinkled through a tall arched window. The stairs wound round and round a deep stairwell, up into blackness; the handrail was smooth polished wood. Everything smelled of a mineral decay. They climbed up two flights, their footsteps echoing because there was no stair carpet. He pushed another door.
—She’s in there.
Hilary didn’t know what she expected to find.
Sheila was sitting with a concentrated face, rocking backwards and forwards on a double bed which was just a mattress on bare floorboards. She was wearing a long black T-shirt, her hair was scraped carelessly back and tied with a scarf. The room was lit by another bare bulb, not a ceiling pendant this time but a lamp-base without a shade, which cast leering shadows upwards. It was warm: an electric radiator painted mustard yellow was plugged in the same socket as the lamp. Hilary felt herself overheating at once, her face turning hot red, after her exertions in the cold outside.
—Thank God you’ve come, Hills, Sheila said.
She sounded practical rather than emotional. That at least was reassuring.
Pinstripe stepped into the room behind Hilary. He put on a shifty uncomfortable smile, not quite looking straight at Sheila, focusing on the dark tangle of sheets and blankets that she seemed to have kicked to the bottom of the bed.
—D’you want anything? Tea?
Sheila shook her head.—I’m only throwing it up.
—D’you want anything?
Hilary couldn’t believe he was actually talking to her.—No, I’m fine, thanks, she said.
—I’ll be downstairs, he said.—If you need anything.
They heard the sound of his footsteps retreating. Hilary put down her case: her hand for quite a few minutes wouldn’t ease from its frozen curled position.—Shuggs: what’s going on?
Sheila groaned: not in answer to the question, but a sound ripped from inside her, a low and embarrassing rumble as if she didn’t care what anybody heard. She rocked fiercely.
—I’m miscarrying a pregnancy, she said when the spasm seemed to have passed.—It’s a fine mess. Blood everywhere. Buckets of blood. You’ll have to help get rid of everything.
—I can’t believe this, Hilary said. She felt she was still somewhere inside the Bluebeard story she had been imagining on her way from the bus station. For a few pure moments she blazed with anger against Sheila. It wasn’t fair, for Sheila to have spoiled her visit with this, her so looked-forward-to chance to get away. Sheila’s mission had been clear and certain: to cut herself free of all the muffling dependencies of home and childhood. If she could succumb to anything so predictable as this melodrama – just what their parents would have warned against if only they hadn’t been too agonised to find the words – what hope was there?
—What are you doing here? she demanded.—What is this place?
—It’s a squat, said Sheila calmly.—Neil’s squat. I told them at Manor Hall that I was going away for a few days. They’re not to ever know anything about this, obviously.
—You’d be kicked out.
—Uh-oh, said Sheila, attentive to something inside her. Then she lunged from the bed to sit on something like a chamber pot in the crazy shadows on the far side of the room. Hilary tried not to hear anything. – Oh, oh, Sheila groaned, hugging her white legs, pressing her forehead to her knees.
—They wouldn’t kick me out, she said after a while.—It’s not that.
—And who’s Neil?
—That’s him, you idiot. You’ve just walked in with him.
Hilary hadn’t moved from where she stood when she first came in, or even made any move to unbutton her mac.
She felt as if there was an unpassable waste of experience between her and her sister now, which couldn’t be crossed. Sheila had joined the ranks of women submerged and knowing amid their biology. She realised with a new shock that Sheila must have had sexual intercourse, too, in order to be pregnant.
—I don’t want Mum to know, that’s why, Sheila said.—I’ll simply kill you if you ever tell anyone at home.
—I wouldn’t, said Hilary coldly.
—I just can’t bear the idea of her thinking that this is the same thing, you know? The same stuff that’s happened to her. Because it isn’t.
Hilary was silent. After a long while Sheila stood up stiffly from the chamber pot. She stuffed what looked like an old towel between her legs, and moving slowly, bent over as if she was very old, she lay down on the bed again, on her side this time, with her eyes closed.
—You could take it down to the lavatory for me. It’s a flight and a half down, door on the right.
Hilary didn’t stir.
—Please, Hills. You could cover it with a newspaper or something.
—Did you do this deliberately? Hilary said.—Is this an abortion?
—No. It just happened. I might have done it deliberately, but I didn’t need to. I’d only just realised that I was pregnant. I’ve only missed two periods, I think. I never keep track.
—Who is the father of it?
Sheila’s eyes snapped open incredulously.—Who do you think? she said.—I wouldn’t have just sent any old person to get you.
Hilary helped. Several times she carried the chamber pot down one and a half flights of stairs, holding the banister rail, watching her feet carefully in the gloom (there was only the one bulb in the hallway, which Neil had switched on when they first came in). She covered whatever was inside the pot with a piece of newspaper, then tipped it into the lavatory without looking and flushed the chain. Thankfully it had a good strong flush. She stood listening to voices downstairs, a long way off as if they came from underground, from a basement room perhaps: Neil’s voice and others, male and female, subdued but nonetheless breaking out into laughter sometimes. Opening off the landing above the lavatory Hilary found a filthy bathroom, with a torn plastic curtain at the window, overgrown with black mould. An ancient rusted red-painted reel wound with canvas rope was secured to the wall beside the window, with instructions on how to lower it as an escape harness in case of fire. She ran the bath taps for a while, but although the pipes gave out buckings and bellowing noises and hiccuped gouts of tea-coloured cold water into the grit and dirt in the bottom of the bath, she couldn’t get either tap to run hot.
—There’s no hot water, Sheila said.—This is a squat: what did you think? Everyone goes into the halls to bathe. We’re lucky to have electricity: one of the guys knew how to reconnect it. You could ask Neil for the electric kettle. What do you want hot water for anyway?
—I thought you might like a wash. I thought I could put some things in to soak.
—Don’t worry about it. I’ll wash in the morning. We can take all this stuff to the launderette later.
Although they had always lived so close together in the forced intimacy of the vicarage, where there was only one lavatory and fractious queues for the bathroom in the mornings, the sisters had been prudish in keeping their bodily functions hidden from one another. This was partly in scalded reaction to their mother, who poked curiously in the babies’ potties to find swallowed things, and delivered sanitary towels to the girls’ room with abandoned openness, as if she didn’t know that the boys saw. They had even always, since they stopped being little girls, undressed quickly with their backs turned, or underneath their nightdresses. It was a surprise how small the step seemed, once Hilary had taken it, over into this new bodily intimacy of shared secret trouble and mess. Sheila’s pains, she began to understand, had a rhythm to them: first a strong pang, then a pause, then a sensation as if things were coming away inside her. After that she might get ten or fifteen minutes’ respite. When the pain was at its worst, Hilary rubbed her back, or Sheila gripped her hand and squeezed it, hard and painfully, crushing the bones together.
—Damn, damn, damn, she swore in a sing-song moan while she rocked backwards and forwards; tears squeezed out of her shut eyes and ran down her cheeks.
—Are you sorry? Hilary said, humbled.
—How could I possibly be sorry? Sheila snapped.—You think I want a baby?
She said the pains had begun at three in the afternoon. She told Hilary at some point that if they were still going on in the morning they would have to call an ambulance and get her into hospital: she explained in a practical voice that women could haemorrhage and die if these things went wrong. By ten o’clock, though, the worst seemed to be over. There hadn’t been any bad pains for over an hour, the bleeding was almost like a normal period. When Neil came upstairs Sheila wanted a cup of tea and a hot-water bottle.
—You’ll have to take Hilary out, she told him,—and buy her something to eat.
Hilary had eaten some sandwiches on the coach at lunchtime. She hadn’t had anything since then; she didn’t feel hungry but she felt light-headed and her hands were shaking.
—I’m fine, she said hastily.—I don’t want anything.
—Don’t be so silly. Buy her some fish and chips or something.
Hilary was too tired not to be obedient. She put on her mac and followed Neil downstairs, as if their fatal passage round the city had to recommence. At least this time she wouldn’t be carrying her case. She waited on the street outside; he said he had to fetch the others.
—By the way, he added, not looking at her,—I shouldn’t mention anything. They just think Sheila’s got a tummy bug. They’d be upset.
—OK, Hilary mumbled. Furiously she thought to herself that she wouldn’t have spoken to his friends about her sister if he had tortured her. ‘You silly little man,’ she imagined herself saying. ‘How dare you think I care about upsetting them?’ She tipped back her head and looked up the precipitous fronts of the houses to the far-off sky, studded with cold stars.
She noticed that Neil had put on shoes to come out this time: a pair of gym shoes, gaping without laces. His friend Julian had jug ears and long dyed blond hair; Gus was shy and lumpish, like a boy swelled to man-size without his face or body actually changing to look grown-up. Becky was a pretty girl in a duffel coat, who giggled and swivelled her gaze too eagerly from face to face: she couldn’t get enough of her treat, being the only girl and having the attention of three men. She knew instinctively that Hilary didn’t count. Even her patronising was perfunctory: she reminisced about her own A levels as if she was reaching back into a long-ago past.
—You’ve chosen all the easy ones, you clever thing! My school forced me to do double maths, it was ghastly.
—Are you sure you’re not hungry? Neil said to Hilary as they hurried past a busy chip shop with a queue.—Only if we don’t stop we’re in time for the pub. You could have some crisps there.
Hilary gazed into the bright steamy window, assaulted by the smell of the chips, weak with longing.—Quite sure, she said. She had never been into a pub in her life. There was a place in Haverhill where some of the girls went from school, but she and Sheila had always despised the silly self-importance of teenage transgression. It was impossible to imagine ever wanting to enter the ugly square red-brick pub in the village, where the farm labourers drank, and the men from the estate who worked in the meat-packing factory. Neil’s pub was a tiny cosy den, fumy light glinting off the rows of glasses and bottles. The stale breath of it made Hilary’s head swim; they squeezed into red plush seats around a table. Neil didn’t ask her what she wanted, but brought her a small mug of brown beer and a packet of crisps and one of peanuts. She didn’t like the taste of the beer but because the food was so salty she drank it in thirsty mouthfuls, and then was seized by a sensation as if she floated up to hang some little way above her present situation, graciously indifferent, so that her first experience of drunke
nness was a blessed one.
When the pub closed they came back to the house and sat around a table in the basement kitchen by candlelight: the kitchen walls were painted crudely with huge mushrooms and blades of grass and giant insects, making Hilary feel as if she was a miniature human at the deep bottom of a forest. She drank the weak tea they put in front of her. The others talked about work and exams. Becky was doing biological sciences, Gus was doing history, Julian and Neil seemed to be doing English. Hilary couldn’t believe that they sounded just like girls at school, scurrying in the rat-run of learning and testing, trying to outdo one another in protestations of how little work they’d done. Not once did any of them actually speak seriously about their subjects. Hilary felt so deeply disappointed in university life that on the spot she made up her mind to dedicate herself to something different and nobler, although she wasn’t clear what. Neil and Julian were concentrating upon sticking a brown lump of something on a pin and roasting it with a match. From her indifferent distance she supposed this must be drugs, but she wasn’t frightened of that now.
—Don’t tell your daddy the vicar what you’ve seen, said Neil.
The Penguin Book of the British Short Story Page 81