Harriet Said

by Beryl Bainbridge

  Above the loudspeaker music and the excited cries of Frances I heard Harriet say, ‘I kept thinking of Wales when I was sitting with her. Not the boy with the yellow hair, but the country. I kept seeing it.’

  ‘Perhaps he’ll be here,’ I said, thinking of the Tsar, as we turned along the path to the field.

  A man in shirt-sleeves sat heedlessly in the rain on a three-legged stool in the grass, before a small table. He gave us tickets without looking up from the paper he was reading, making a small flapping movement with it when Harriet leaned too heavily against the table.

  ‘Don’t,’ I admonished her, hoping he would look up, and I would be able to tell instantly if he thought me stout. But he paid no attention, just sat there head down, the rain moulding his black hair like a cap about his ears, and read his paper.

  Small gusts of wind eddied down the field; the air was filled with sharp intakes of breath; children and girls screamed uniformly, clinging to the striped poles of the roundabouts, spinning round and round on painted horses.

  The field seemed small, bounded by trees and cottages and the red brick paper shop; a handkerchief of grass laid out under the wet sky, dragged in the centre by two machines that stamped and whirled and flung fragile boats above the earth.

  In the light nothing was exciting; even Frances felt this as she climbed slowly on to the roundabout, gazing flatly about her, waiting for the horses to move. When they did, causing her to lurch forward and cling tightly to the pole, she did not scream, only made a little soft ‘Oh!’ of surprise.

  Harriet and I did not want to do anything yet, meaning to save our money till we had taken Frances home and it was almost dark in the field. It was irritating to have to stand there and be seen bedraggled in the rain.

  I had tried to explain to my mother that it was awful to go so early; that one looked so silly when the field was full of small children. I could not explain that when it was dark a new dignity would transform the fair into an oasis of excitement, so that it became a place of mystery and delight; peopled with soldiers from the camp and orange-faced girls wearing head scarves, who in strange regimented lines would sway back and forth across the field, facing each other defiantly, exchanging no words, bright-eyed under the needle stars. I could not explain how all at once the lines would meet and mingle performing a complicated rite of selection; orange girls and soldier boys pairing off slowly to drift to the far end of the field and struggle under the hedges filled with blackberries.

  It was then that Harriet and I would ride the roundabouts, whirling in the middle of the field and scattering screams into distant corners of the fairground, hearing in our voices the exhausted cries of those others, smearing mouths together in the rain.

  Frances climbed politely down and stood unsteadily on the grass. She waved her arms windmill fashion in exaggeration. ‘I feel so dizzy.’

  ‘What would you like to do now?’ Harriet asked her. ‘The same thing again or those dive-bombers?’

  Frances looked reflectively at the yellow boats, tethered on steel rods one above the other. They rose slowly crabwise, plunged sickeningly, spun above the grass and climbed again.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She moved her shoe in the damp soil and turned her face away from us.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ I held out my hand and led her to the pay stool. I felt sad for her disappointment, her inability to enjoy herself after all. The excitement of the fair she had imagined, had not materialised; she was thrown in on herself, politely going through the motions of wonder.

  I clutched her arm tightly in the dive-bomber, enacting fear, screaming as we heeled to the ground, heads hanging above the blurred field.

  She began to laugh now and when it was all over begged me to stay for another turn, excitedly jumping in her seat, saying, ‘Do let’s have another ride. Isn’t it awful?’

  The machine quivered, the tune of Soldiers of the Queen marched strongly out from the loudspeaker and lifted us into the sky. I could not be sure that Frances was really excited, or whether, just as I pretended for her sake, so she too laughed and struggled in an effort to please. Perhaps I had spoilt her joy the day before in the garden, when I had said I did not wish to take her.

  So together in mutual deceit we plummeted and screamed, breathless at the end, and stumbling a little in the field.

  It was growing darker above the spread-eagled trees; multi-coloured lights began to flicker along the Hoop-la stall. A string of pearls, slung from the top of the dynamo van to the roof of the roundabouts, glowed palely against the sky.

  I wished for Frances she should go home laden with presents such as one read about in books; traditional prizes of dolls with real golden hair, and little dogs, and a box of chocolates for Mother. But we won nothing, and if we had, the prizes were of such a practical, utility nature we would have been ashamed to carry them. Finally, we bought her a stick of candy floss, that waved loosely before her mouth like fine mist, and took her home.

  Mother opened wide arms to Frances, making little sounds of disapproval when she felt the damp hair, fetching a towel immediately from the bathroom to rub protectively the child’s head.

  It was warm in the front-room with the curtains drawn, and the flowers cast spiked shadows on the tablecloth. My father leaned backwards in his chair, gazing at us through spectacles bandaged firmly at the bridge with sticking plaster.

  Almost I wanted to stay with them, not go out riotously into the fairground with Harriet.

  I bent to kiss my father on the forehead. I turned to embrace my mother but she was locked in love with Frances so I was embarrassed.

  ‘I won’t be late,’ I promised them all, opening the door thankfully and walking down the hall.

  ‘Put this on.’ My father stood behind me holding a scarf in his hands. He wrapped it round my neck, searching my face with pathetic eyes. He too was afraid and uncertain how to guide me. His face in his inability to pass on experience was crumpled and pompous. I ran out to join Harriet at the gate, the scarf chafing my neck.

  It was very cold now; the wind that blew from the sea swept away the fairground music in confusion, so that sometimes we heard it loudly almost in our faces, and then far away and small above the houses.

  The field was dark with people; clusters of soldiers like worker-bees rose and fell on the undulating floor of the roundabout. The girls linked arm-in-arm, mouths like purple flowers in the artificial light, walked a sedate palais glide for attention. A voice magnified by a loudspeaker sang, ‘Your mother was crying, your father was crying and I was crying too’. It should have been funny to hear, but there was such a soaring swooning constancy in the voice, and such a surge of power flooded into the field and overwhelmed the wind, that it assumed tragic proportions.

  We rode the roundabouts, shrieking among the painted horses, riding endlessly round and round, waiting for the Tsar to come. When he did come and Harriet shouted to me, ‘He’s here, Sister Ann,’ I did not recognise him, so strangely the light distorted his face.

  I stared at the hunch-backed dwarf he had become, his brow like a pale dome, the smile that twisted the black mouth utterly mocking and changed. When he moved to meet us, he bulged hideously under the chain of pearls, his raincoat flapping shroudlike in the wind.

  ‘Hallo,’ he said, the cold eyes watching my face carefully.

  Harriet wandered away leaving me alone with him.

  We both felt it was all so unusual, to be walking together so dangerously in a merry-go-round world, and nothing must be missed. The Tsar won a glass butter-dish at the Hoop-la stall, and put it in his pocket with great satisfaction, smiling at me complacently.

  We walked down the field, further into the darkness; at our feet in the wet grass, among the old tins and rubbish, lay the reflections of lights, fragments of glass in blue and yellow and orange, not big enough or tangible enough to take home and look through later, turning the world to gold.

  A row of girls went gaily by, heads bent against the rain, flowe
r mouths slightly parted, delicate legs prancing over the puddles. Then there was no one in the whole field but ourselves, walking away down the avenue of bold little lights, walking in desolation. Going over the grass with no one to call us securely in to supper, we became abstracted. No great voice called out terribly, ‘Come back, stop!’ No great wind came behind us and tore us apart. In a silence bordered by the sad whine of the voice singing wearily now above the soughing trees, the old man kissed my lips, laying them against his own quite flatly and coldly.

  Then we walked back towards all the noise and confusion; neither lingeringly nor tenderly, but briskly.

  I did not know what to make of it. I had not been kissed many times, but Paul Ricotti had almost swallowed me in his mouth, and the lorry driver Harriet and I had met once when on a picnic had bent me over backwards in his emotion. Both occasions had been funny; the dry calculated embrace of the Tsar might almost have been given by my father, except that it was so sad.

  I looked for Harriet among the crowd and found her near the Hoop-la stall, swaying on her feet, her arm round the waist of a soldier.

  ‘Harriet, it’s awfully late, please come home.’ I felt tired and cold now. The face she turned to me was so wild under the coloured light I was unable to return her gaze.

  Once a long time ago we had met the gardener in the Rhododendron Lands; he had told us we were trespassing and demanded our names and addresses. Harriet, her face illuminated from within by an almost diabolic emotion, had cursed him terribly, walking away a little between the bushes as if to avoid contact with him, white-faced with passion, shouting out insults. The man, appalled by her mood, had turned to me pitifully.

  ‘I’m only doing my job, missie. It’s only what’s expected of me.’

  Harriet trembled on the path and shouted harshly, ‘Don’t talk to him. Don’t talk to the swine.’

  Going home she was perfectly controlled and seemed to have forgotten the whole incident.

  So now I stood hesitatingly, unable to plead with her, fearing her inner exultation. Though she seemed younger than I, it was never my part to be responsible for her; she it was who always decided our actions, and told me what to write in the diary.

  I turned and walked out of the field, hoping she would follow.

  The Tsar was nowhere in the lane, and though I loitered for a while by the paper shop neither he nor Harriet came.

  All the enjoyment had receded from me; I walked miserably down the lane, struggling with a feeling of guilt. There was nothing tangible I had done that was wrong, no sin that I had not committed many times before. I had not even told lies to my parents. I had gone out with their blessing; the scarf now damp and heavy about my neck was proof of this. Still the niggling feeling of uneasiness persisted. I quickened my steps half expecting my father to be at the bend of the road, flurried and harsh with worry at my returning so late.

  But there was no one in the lane and, once indoors out of the darkness, my mother and father received me kindly and absent-mindedly, only frowning a little at my wet clothes and exhausted face.

  I sat drinking hot milk by the kitchen fire, thinking of Harriet and the Tsar still whirling in infinite darkness outside the window.

  8

  The next morning, almost as soon as I had finished breakfast, I heard Harriet whistling outside in the lane.

  My mother said firmly, as I dried the dishes, ‘You’re not going out till I’ve been helped a little first. She is a nuisance.’ I felt disloyal to both of them. ‘She’s always calling. I’ve hardly seen you at all this holiday.’

  As soon as I could I ran to the door and looked into the garden. Harriet was patiently leaning against the gate, resting her head on its wooden top, swaying backwards and forwards.

  ‘Harriet,’ I shouted, ‘I’ll see you at the library in an hour. Go away now.’

  The day was clear and calm, showing no trace of the wildness of last night; between sedate gardens hedged with blossom Harriet went her quiet way, clad in a blue dress and cardigan.

  All along the street of shops people called out to me enquiringly, expressing their opinions on my height and weight. I was extremely polite, voice like a bell ringing the changes, weaving my ponderous papal way to the library.

  Harriet said in surprise, ‘You’re so horribly nice and well-mannered. Fancy even speaking to that awful Heatherlee woman after what she said about the Jews.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ I felt embarrassed. ‘It makes things easier in the long run. Diplomacy, you know.’

  It was not true; though I spoke graciously to everyone it was Harriet they genuinely liked. Even Mrs Heatherlee, who in conversation called her ‘That Dreadful Child’, had given her chocolate in the grocer’s.

  Harriet had once told the station porter Disraeli that on Victory Day Mrs Heatherlee had seven loose women in the backyard; she had heard them gambolling round the coal shed shouting, ‘Dear ole Freddie.’ Mrs Heatherlee’s daughter Margaret had been standing on the platform a few yards away; but even she lent Harriet a book called ‘The Dimsie Omnibus’.

  ‘What happened to the Dimsie Omnibus?’ said Harriet suddenly, linking up logically that occasion with the smart Mrs Heatherlee now burrowing mole-like into her little black car.

  ‘You burnt it,’ I said crossly and entered the library.

  ‘Guess who I met last night?’

  ‘Charlie Chester.’

  ‘Seriously,’ said Harriet ‘I came out of the field with the soldier shortly after you left and Mrs Biggs was standing on the pavement. Dreadfully wet, with no hat and grey hair to her shoulders, waiting for the Tsar.’

  ‘What did she say?’ I remembered that Harriet did not yet know he had kissed me.

  ‘Oh, Hallo, almost as if she were at the races. Trying to pretend she always stood on the pavement on rainy evenings. I felt sorry for her so I told her I had seen the Tsar a moment ago in the field. And she said, “Yes I know, he’s forgotten something.” I nearly said, “You”, but walked away with my soldier instead. Do you know he wanted me to take his pay book and address if only I’d go into the bushes with him. In all that rain. They are funny.’

  ‘Harriet!’ A feeling of panic and despair had abruptly taken hold of me. ‘Please.’

  She looked at my face in bewilderment, unable to comprehend immediately.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said softly, thrusting a book into my hand, standing huddled against me, screening my body.

  Tears ran weakly down my cheeks; I ached with the suppressed desire to howl like an animal in pain, deep alleviating moans that would ease me. I stood there mutely, crying endlessly in distress, without knowing why.

  Harriet looked down the avenue of shelves. ‘Try to stop. Someone might come in.’

  I did not care but I tried to stop for her sake, rubbing my hand convulsively across my eyes.

  We walked out of the library, Harriet shielding my ravaged face, talking loudly and quickly. We did not stop till we reached the deserted park; until we sat down in the long grass by the public lavatories.

  ‘Why,’ said Harriet, ‘what happened last night?’

  ‘He kissed me.’ My voice was thick and muffled; it sounded very serious and impressive, but what I said seemed trite.

  ‘Well!’

  ‘I just felt sad suddenly, that’s all. Her standing in the rain, and you with a soldier, and me in bed, and the Tsar lost without any of us.’

  ‘Oh!’ Harriet sounded aggrieved, pulling the grass with irritated fingers, stabbing the dry soil beneath.

  ‘I don’t see what there is to cry about,’ she added. ‘Unless you just feel emotional.’

  Though it was not true, I almost felt that this time she had failed to understand; that her experience and mine had not advanced to the same point.

  ‘It’s sad,’ said Harriet, ‘but not as sad as all that. If he likes to amuse himself with you and she likes to follow him and make herself miserable, that’s their stupidity. It’s sad too, of course, but it’s better than
nothing for both of them.’

  The word ‘amuse’ caused me intense sorrow. Tears of self-pity welled in my eyes, the park swam in a huge bubble of moisture; I began to cry noisily.

  ‘Don’t be illogical,’ Harriet spoke sharply.

  ‘It never has been easy, you ought to know by now. In Wales …’ She was silent suddenly.

  ‘If you really loved him, really and truly.’ I sat up angrily, remembering the page in the diary I had not been allowed to read. ‘You couldn’t possibly go off with anyone else. That’s sad too.’

  Harriet turned to me in amazement and disbelief.

  ‘I didn’t love him. I never said I did. You are a fool. And that’s sadder than anything else I’ve ever known.’

  Face scornful, she stood up and folded her arms, looking down at me with derision.

  I began to feel better. Anger bestowed by Harriet was always more exhilarating than sympathy, and the fact that she had not after all loved the boy in Wales was a thing of happiness in itself. I wiped my face with the hem of my dress and said cheerfully, ‘You are quite right, I was just feeling emotional. I feel fine now.’

  She was thoughtful going home; she spoke little, a frown of concentration puckered her eyes. I might have thought the sun too strong the way she frowned, but I knew her too well to be so easily mistaken. Outside my gate she paused. Her fingers exploring the blistered paintwork, she said, ‘Could you be outside my house a little after nine? I have a plan.’

  I felt it was rather late to be going adventuring, and told her so.

  ‘Please yourself,’ she said, opening wide eyes with apparent lack of interest.

  That evening, some minutes to nine, I was waiting outside her house, sitting on the kerb of the pavement, feeling quite warm and comfortable, not wondering or even curious, just waiting for Harriet. Everything in the lane was so quiet, and similar, so conducive to calmness; the row of red-bricked, identical little houses; a toy-town line of chimney stacks bobbing blackened corks into the colourless sky. A Sunday decorum enveloped the lane in silence and respectability. Behind lace curtains, families sat in mettlesome companionship, shut securely in their boxes on the squares of lawn.