by David Storey
‘Will you be going back today?’ his mother said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think so.’
‘Where are you living now?’ she said.
‘I have a room,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave the address.’
She still watched him. Her eyes were reddened, her cheeks swollen. At any moment, he thought, she might collapse.
‘Your father rang Wendy last night,’ she said. ‘While you were out.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said.
‘He wanted someone to talk to.’
‘I’ll go and see her,’ he said, ‘before I get the train.’
He laid the fire for her and lit it.
He ate the breakfast she’d cooked for him and helped her to wash up.
‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘I’d better be going.’
She came with him to the front door. She scarcely spoke.
‘I’ll try and drop in before I leave.’
‘Yes,’ she said and nodded.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘At what’s happened.’
‘Yes.’ She stood in the door, her hands clasped together.
‘Well, then,’ he said, and stepped into the road.
She watched him out of sight.
He caught a bus to the outskirts of the town. At the terminus, the summit of yet another estate, he got out and walked.
The road led up the flank of the valley, away from the town, towards the hills and the moorland to the west. The fields on this side were given over to pasture. Beyond the low hedges an occasional stone farmhouse appeared then, as he climbed higher, several brick houses, large and invariably surrounded by trees. Long driveways coiled away from the road.
His sister’s house lay up a narrow, unmade lane. It occupied a terraced clearing in a belt of woodland at the edge of the valley. A drive of black tarmac, inset with parallel lines of white pebbles, led, beyond a pair of wrought-iron gates, to the house itself, a vast, mock-Elizabethan structure with tall chimneys reaching well above the level of the trees.
A stone terrace isolated the house from the garden which, in a series of broad arcs composed of lawns and bare flower beds, ran down to the road on one side and to the cleared edge of woodland on the other.
The building was half-timbered. A great deal of ivy had been trained up the lower, brick walls – terminating abruptly where the dark woodwork and the pale yellow plasterwork began.
The front door, a rivet-studded panel, had opened as he came up the drive and a moment later a young woman in a red dress appeared.
She was perhaps in her late twenties, small and rather delicate. She waited until he’d reached her before she offered any greeting. Then, smiling, they shook hands.
‘You see,’ she said. ‘I could have fetched you.’ He had ’phoned her from the town. ‘It’s further than you think.’
‘It’s all the same,’ he said. ‘I enjoyed the walk.’ And as if he were the host and she the visitor he led the way inside.
They went through to the rear where a large sitting-room, furnished with mock-tudor tables and chairs and a heavy, chintz-covered suite, looked out onto the garden and, beyond, the valley itself.
A girl brought them in some coffee.
‘How are they at home?’ she said.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Surviving.’
‘I can imagine,’ she said.
He had gone to stand at the window. The city stood out now in a simple silhouette on the opposite skyline. To the west the steep slopes of the estate round his parents’ house blended into the final ridge which separated this valley from the parallel one to the north. It was possible to pick out his parents’ house. That whole flank of the valley, however, was dissolving in a yellow shaft of light.
‘You’ll stay to lunch,’ she said. ‘I’ve rung Arnold and he’s coming specially. He can run you back to town.’
She’d sat down across the room, her legs tucked up beneath her.
‘It’s very strange,’ he said. ‘I was thinking, on the way up, looking back at the town: all those houses occupied by women.’ He glanced back at her. ‘It’s extraordinary. The whole thing divided into two.’
‘Yes.’ She had begun to smile.
‘The men go off to war: the women sweep up the house.’
‘Some do,’ she said.
‘Well.’ He looked back at the valley. A line of rooks had risen from the trees.
‘Some houses are empty,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Some women go to work. They aren’t all like me.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I was forgetting.’
He turned back from the window and sat down.
‘I’m sorry about your news,’ she said.
‘Yes.’ He added, ‘What did my father say when he rang up?’
‘Nothing really. He started crying.’
‘Yes,’ he said and feeling her eyes on him looked away.
‘You’ve left Kay for good?’
‘I think so.’
‘You’re not sure.’
‘Yes. I am,’ he said and glanced up at her directly. She was watching him with a slight frown.
‘You’re an awful ass,’ she said.
‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘it comes to us all.’
For a while they were silent. The girl came into the room, replaced the coffee-pot, and went out.
‘What have you come up here to do, Colin?’ she said. ‘Put the skids under all of us? Aren’t we to have any rest at all?’
‘I don’t know why I came. Partly circumstance.’
‘My dad could have done without it for a start.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
The vast landscape below was beginning to darken. The light flowed out of the clouds in odd, moving patches. It lit up a clump of buildings, some sort of gully, a wood, then slowly drained away.
‘What did Eileen think?’ she said.
‘Eileen? She’s a creature of instinct, Wendy, and good intentions. That’s really where the rot begins.’
‘Not until we come out of test-tubes will we be safe.’
‘At least, one can never feel possessed by a test-tube.’
‘Well,’ she said, looking up, ‘do you feel possessed?’ And added, ‘I wouldn’t be too sure.’
A storm had broken by the time Arnold arrived. He came into the room blinking, wiping the snow from his hair. ‘Golly,’ he said. ‘Another few minutes and I might have missed it.’
He was a squat, athletic-looking man with sandy hair and a small, square sandy moustache. His skin was fair and slightly freckled. He wore a dark suit with a handkerchief poking from the top pocket. To some extent, perhaps because of his formality, he looked not unlike one of Eileen’s sons. ‘Well,’ he said, shaking his hand, ‘how are you?’ turning away before he could answer.
‘We’re lucky to have Arnold here at all,’ his sister said. ‘He’s been recently moved up.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said as if this had escaped him. ‘It never rains but it pours.’ He took the drink which, at the sound of his arrival, Wendy had poured, sipped it, smacked his lips, said, ‘Lovely, sweetie,’ kissed her cheek and, putting his free arm around her, added to Pasmore, avoiding his direction entirely, ‘What’s she been up to, then? Belly-aching about her marital status?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Mostly mine.’
‘She told you that she’s up for the council?’ he said as if he hadn’t heard this reply.
‘No,’ he said.
‘She’s just received her nomination.’ He drew away from her slightly so that he might admire her. ‘As a socialist at that. I tell her nothing about my work. The greatest satisfaction I shall have is the thought of that proletarian council taking to its bosom suc
h a treacherous tick as my wife.’
He released her so that she could mix him a second drink.
‘The Pasmores,’ he added, ‘are the most engaging family I’ve ever met. They’re like horses. Put a pair of blinkers on them, set them in any direction you choose and off they go, as hard as blazes. God help anyone who’s standing in their path.’
He took the drink, swallowed it neat and enveloped her in his arms again.
His sister gazed out from her husband’s embrace with a slow, watchful candour as if to warn him against any criticism of this display.
Over lunch his brother-in-law said, ‘Did Wendy tell you we’re adopting a couple of youngsters? Seems we’re not up to it ourselves. Don’t know which one it is. It’s not from want of trying.’ He exchanged looks with his wife and laughed. ‘Bit of a pickle, really. I thought she’d have had enough with me. I need more attention than any child.’ He got up once again to kiss her and, having rung for the maid, brought out a box of cigars.
‘Imagine,’ his sister said, indicating the snow-swept view from the window, ‘some poor little bastard struggling into that without realizing it’ll end up here.’
‘Oh, well,’ his brother-in-law said, ‘it could be worse.’
The snow had stopped when they went out to the car. The valley was blanketed with snow. The town stood out in symmetrical black blocks the other side.
‘There’s always room for you here,’ his sister said after she’d shaken hands. ‘Apart from that I don’t really know what to say. I’ll write to Kay.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very kind.’
She stepped back from the window and waved as the car slid off through the crisp snow in the drive.
For a while they drove in silence. The road was covered in snow. No other tracks were visible in it.
As the first buildings came into sight he said, ‘I wonder, could you drop me off at home rather than the station?’
‘Oh, sure,’ his brother-in-law had said.
He seemed embarrassed now they were on their own.
As they crossed the river and passed the factory where he worked he said, ‘There’s a chap on our board called Swanson. You’ve probably never heard of him?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘A nice bloke. Quite substantial. But inoffensive, nothing much to look at. His wife’s very much the same, a home-bird, self-effacing. You know the type. They’ve three lovely children.’ He paused as he turned a corner, shook a fist at a driver he overtook, and added, ‘A year ago he gets a Swedish housemaid. You’ve heard it all before. But look at it this way. The girl’s exactly the type he’d never have come into contact with unless he was where he was, a father, married, substantial, a good home. When he was single he couldn’t have got within a mile of a girl like this. They wouldn’t have had two minutes for him. And now, there he is, with one inside his house. I mean, to my simple mind that’s a terrible sort of irony. As it is, I know for a fact he hasn’t touched her. But between you, me and the gatepost I also know for a fact that it’s driving him out of his mind.’
‘Perhaps he should get rid of the girl,’ he said assuming that this was the nearest his brother-in-law would get to talking about his situation.
‘So what?’ he said. ‘The damage’s been done. The fissure’s open. Get rid of her or keep her: he sees now what a complete crack-up the whole business really is.’ He glanced at him as frequently as his driving would allow. ‘You’ve got to admit, old man. That really is the sort of irony that can break the most decent sort of chap, I don’t care how deep his attachments lie.’
He dropped him off at the end of the estate.
‘I won’t drive up,’ he said. ‘It means popping in for a chat and I should have been back half an hour ago.’ He put out his hand across the car. ‘Well, I’ll see you, old boy,’ he added. ‘Keep in touch.’
He watched him drive off.
When he got back to the house he found his father sitting alone by the fire.
He had evidently just got back from work. His meal lay on the table, uneaten.
‘Is my mother out?’ he said.
‘She’s shopping.’
‘I dropped in,’ he said, ‘to say goodbye.’
His father said nothing, gazing at the fire. His feet were bare, reddened by the flames.
‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘I’d better be off. The train leaves in an hour.’
‘I thought you’d already gone,’ his father said.
He looked up. His face had collapsed. His cheeks were sucked in between his jaws.
‘I’ll write when I get back,’ he said.
His father looked back at the fire.
‘I wish to God,’ he said, ‘you’d never been born. I wish to God you hadn’t.’
‘Well,’ he said and moved back to the door.
His father sat crouched forward, small, staring at the fire.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’ll go.’
‘Don’t come again,’ his father said. ‘Not ever.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘All right.’
He went out and closed the door.
As he went down the road he saw his mother approaching from the other end.
She hadn’t seen him. She was walking through the snow.
He turned up an adjoining crescent, stepped in a gate and, shielded by the hedge, watched her pass.
She walked slowly, carrying a bag which dragged down her shoulder, staring at the ground. Her coat, too large, reached almost to her ankles.
He thought, then, that he might have called out. It was like a figure crossing a stage.
Yet he waited by the hedge and only when he judged she had disappeared did he step out. He continued down the road and caught a bus to the station.
PART II
Nine
He scarcely left his room. He was aware of small things. Like someone inside an egg, a scratching and a scraping: the vague sense of activity outside.
Every few days he went down into the street and bought some provisions, tins, packets of food that would keep. Much of it remained uneaten. He never opened the curtains, lying on the bed all day watching the odd fluctuations of light and shade on the ceiling.
He was in difficulties with the landlord. Inadvertently, on leaving, Helen had omitted to pay her share of the rent. He’d had to provide the whole of it out of his own pocket. What with the upkeep of his house and its mortgage, the maintenance of his wife and children, and in the reduced circumstances of his fellowship, he was finding his commitments more than he could bear. Whichever way he turned he could see nothing but debt and ruin.
Immediately on his return he had rung Kay with the intention of telling her about his visit home. The ’phone, however, had been answered by his mother-in-law, not coldly, nor warmly, but in a tone of such utter disenchantment that when Kay finally came on the line he could think of nothing to say. When she had asked him how he had got on he had answered, ‘Well, you can probably imagine,’ and at her silence had added, ‘Pretty badly,’ putting down the ’phone with little more having been said.
He rang again two days later and hearing his mother-in-law’s voice hung up without speaking.
He didn’t call again for several days. Oddly, the thing he wanted most to tell Kay about was his father’s reaction, the ghost of which had pursued him all the way to London and into the very room, lurking amongst the shadows of the chairs and the table, an accumulation of fear and terror he found difficult to control. In the evenings, from between the curtains, he would watch the figures collecting in the street below, the scavengers and outcasts, an army of degenerates about to haul him down.
He wanted at these moments, he could scarcely admit it, to go home to Kay and the children, to bury his head amongst them and beg their
forgiveness. All he had ever wanted, from the very beginning, was a feeling of wholeness. All he had ever wanted was to try and set things right.
Occasionally, between dozing and groping into the kitchen in search of food, he wrote letters to Kay: wrote them then tore them up, dropping them in the basket along with his thesis and his papers. Why he couldn’t bring his thoughts into focus now that his feelings were so clear he had no idea.
In the end he decided he had no alternative but to go and see her. He got up, washed and dressed, and set off for his home.
It was a bright, spring-like morning. From the start he felt his spirits rise.
Behind him, as he climbed the hill from Bloomsbury, he could see the edifice of St Pancras station rising like a castle from the mist, its upper pinnacles and minarets, lit by sunshine, reaching up into a clear sky. From beyond its tower rose a column of white smoke, bending over like a stalk, billowing slightly and trailing off in a thin, swaying pennant. He glanced behind him as he climbed: the freshness, the increasing clarity of the air, the sudden warmth; he couldn’t understand why, for so long, he had shut himself away; why, for so long, he had thought himself finished. Things, after all, weren’t as bad as he’d imagined.
He had, in arriving early, anticipated seeing the children before they left for school, and partly at the prospect of hearing them running to the door, and partly out of deference to Kay’s own need for privacy, he rang the bell rather than used his key.
There was, however, some delay in answering the door. It was Kay herself who opened it. She was wearing a light blue dress he had never seen before.
He stood for a moment on the step looking in before he realized that in effect she was holding the door in such a way as to discourage him from entering. She looked, he thought, younger than he had ever seen her, glancing up at him with a curious, almost naïve frankness, like a girl.