Harriet Said

by Beryl Bainbridge

  When Harriet appeared the peace of the evening seemed destroyed; she danced with fearful energy on the pavement, eyes bemused and restless, a figure that jerked and pranced with impatience before me.

  ‘It’s not quite dark enough yet,’ she said, still for a moment looking up at the sky.

  Undecided, she waited, then pulled me to my feet, shaking me till I cried protestingly, ‘Stop it, Harriet, you’re hurting me.’

  She held tight to my arm, face close to mine, the light eyes full-irised, speckled with brown, mouth moistly parted, pellet teeth strained together; then abruptly she released me and walked rapidly down the road. I had to run to keep up with her, for she strode out manfully past the green painted gates and the rubber green hedges, the hem of her dress swinging high above her knees casting shadows on the brittle legs beneath.

  She slackened her pace as we turned into Timothy Street and we walked slowly down the road. A confused image of leaf-dappled kerb-stone and diamond-paned windows reflecting light; high ragged fences of yellowed privet and a long avenue of grey houses with tall trees rustling against their walls.

  Outside the high black gate Harriet paused, reflected, and walked on to the path that ran beside the house. There was a ditch on one side, the wooden fence of the Tsar’s house on the other, and a field at the end. In the field we moved silently along the back of the garden, and paused again outside a smaller gate. Harriet pushed it open cautiously, stepped inside, and turned unsmiling to watch me. I could not move; all was quiet in the field, the back fences of the Timothy Street houses stretched in an unending stockade across the grass. Grey walls rose up behind the enclosure, curtains like eyelids drooped across blackened windows.

  Already it was growing darker as I entered the garden, leaving the gate open for a quick return. Narrow and long lay the garden behind the house, spotted with fruit trees and blackcurrant bushes. A bed of flowering cabbages reared monstrous heads, swollen and decayed above the yellow soil. No sound anywhere, the house motionless at the end of the garden, kitchen window small and clouded.

  If we’re caught, I told myself, we’ll say that we kicked a ball into here; if we’re caught, we’ll say that. If we’re caught.

  Lights began to glow along the faces of the houses. We cast huge shadows on the grass, moving nearer and nearer to the Tsar’s house. Harriet’s shadow stretched further, bent double and dissolved into the wall. We were on a concrete strip before the back door now, and still there was no sound.

  ‘We’ll go along the side path to the front garden when it’s dark,’ whispered Harriet.

  We stayed huddled against the wall, breathing softly; my throat felt constricted, I was afraid I would laugh. We waited for a long time. The darkness settled on the field and garden, rolled towards us along an avenue of trees and grass; we waited at the end of the tunnel, hands spread out against the walls patiently.

  Harriet moved in the darkness and touched my arm.

  ‘Now,’ she said, and on tip-toe we crept along the side wall to the front of the house. Light shone into the garden, voices murmured in the front-room and we waited outside the triangle of orange light. They ought to pull the curtains, I thought. They ought to pull the curtains. We heard distinctly the Tsar say, ‘No, thank you,’ and the sound of dishes moved.

  Then the curtains were drawn across the windows, a thin ribbon of light raddled the grass, a long pinpoint splitting the darkness. Harriet moved to the far window, breaking the knife-edge of light as she crossed the lawn.

  I stayed where I was, hoping Harriet would hurry and tell me we could go home. I heard a low hissing noise that seemed to fill the garden, and moved towards her contorted with fear.

  ‘Be quiet, they’ll hear you.’

  She stood face to the window, peering through a slit in the join of the curtain. I looked through the glass. Directly opposite sat Mrs Biggs, her eyes turned towards me, mouth opening and closing soundlessly. I ducked quickly, dragging Harriet down by the waist.

  ‘She saw me. She saw me.’

  ‘She couldn’t have.’

  Harriet pulled herself away and looked through the glass once more. I pressed my head against the rough wall, shaken by the image of Mrs Biggs behind the window, heavy body upright in her chair, eyebrows raised questioningly, staring at me. Oh God please, Harriet, hurry, oh God please. Harriet bent towards me.

  ‘Do look. It’s perfectly safe.’

  ‘Please, Harriet, come away.’

  ‘Fool! Look at them.’

  Reluctantly I took her position, and searched the room. Mrs Biggs leaned over the radio, hips encased in grey tweed. The Tsar was on the sofa, his face hidden behind a newspaper, legs crossed elegantly, small foot swinging. He put down the paper and shook his head. The face was tired and worn, mouth drooping petulantly, skin puckered despairingly beneath his eyes.

  I felt Harriet’s breath sweep warmly over my neck. She leaned on me heavily, holding my arm. Mrs Biggs crossed the room and sat on the sofa with the Tsar. Suspended in an arc of light, as if posing for posterity, they sat on the sofa staring into the garden; the Tsar jogged one foot up and down gently, hands slack on his thighs. I wondered at the serenity of them both, the relationship that set them a little apart, among furniture they had chosen together. Mrs Biggs moved closer to the Tsar, eyes still turned to the fire, and leaned her grey head on his shoulder. He seemed to wither, the body slumped down, he raised an expressionless face to the ceiling, the fold of skin tightening under his jaw.

  Mrs Biggs in time to the music began to stroke his knee with her plump white hand, her head sinking lower on his arm, eyes closed against the light. She opened her mouth but we could not hear what she said, and the Tsar shifted in his seat and spoke to her. Mrs Biggs stood up suddenly, and Harriet pulled me down on to the flower-bed beneath the window. We breathed deeply in fear, kneeling on damp soil.

  When we looked again the room was lit by firelight alone. It flickered on the brown wall opposite; the brass fender shone at one point like a star, but the sofa was in deep shadow.

  ‘What’s happened?’ whispered Harriet. ‘Can you see them?’

  At that moment a black confused mass heaved and bulged into the firelight. A grey head snuffed itself against the arm of the couch. Two legs thrashed the air. A hand, round and full, clutched at the edge of the carpet.

  I felt huge and bloated with excitement; legs, arms, stomach, mind, ballooned out into the darkness.

  The fire blazed up suddenly in the grate; flames thrust outwards into the dark room, illuminating the couch. Under the monstrous flesh of Mrs Biggs, the Tsar lay pinned like a moth on the sofa, bony knees splitting the air, thighs splayed out to take her awful weight. I could not breathe. Wave upon wave of fear and joy swept over me.

  Like an oiled snake, deep delving and twisting, Mrs Biggs poisoned him slowly, rearing and stabbing him convulsively. Her body writhed gently and was still. Ignoring the woman above him the grey Tsar lay as if dead, pinioned limply, eyes wide and staring, speared in an act of contrition. Full-blown love eddied from the woman, blowzy hips sunk in weariness, litmus flesh soaking up virtue from the body beneath.

  Never never never, beat my heart in the garden, never never; battering against invisible doors that sent agonised pains along my wrists, unshed tears dissolving in my head, I crouched against the window helplessly, unable to move.

  After a long, long time the light was switched on in the room; the Tsar poured himself a drink, standing with his back to the window. Mrs Biggs in the armchair by the fire held a magazine on her lap, moving her lips as she read, sandalled feet planted firmly on the carpet. Everything was the same; fire burning steadily, light in a pool about the sofa and table, flowers on the mantelpiece. No change in the woman’s sensible face, no transfiguration of joy or bliss, and the eyes the Tsar turned to the window as he moved to the fireside were empty and dry.

  ‘It won’t do,’ said Harriet.

  Her voice was too loud in the garden. I turned in fear.


  ‘Let’s go now, Harriet.’

  Even as I spoke she raised her hand and rapped on the pane of glass. I ran quickly over the lawn and down the path alongside the house. I felt envy as I stumbled through the long grass. I was envious because, though I had felt sickened by what I had seen, I had not dared to voice a protest. No matter how moved or desperate I became I could never do what she had done. My mind could flood with dreams of fighting against stupidity and evil, but it was Harriet who would realise them.

  Behind me feet sped down the garden, voices cried out as Harriet lunged against me, light opened up the lawn. As she ran ahead she made strange stifled sounds in her throat; uncontrolled laughter shattered the darkness. It was like a nightmare, the panic-stricken flight into the field, the commanding voice of Mrs Biggs behind us, the swift rush of night air, the fruit trees looming large and formidable in the flood of light, and the sound of laughter far ahead. I whimpered as I ran, breathing promises to God to let me go. Just this once, I promised, oh just this once.

  It was no use escaping by the side path into the street, the Tsar would be standing there ready for me. I had to run on into the darkness of the field. I could no longer hear Harriet, for all I knew she had deliberately gone to meet the Tsar.

  My body arched and thundered over the ground, excitement carrying me further into the darkness. Each step jarred my body painfully, my heart thudded in my breast till I thought it would break in consequence. Exhausted I fell face downwards in the grass.

  Gradually it became quiet and still in the field, my breath ceased to fill the world with noise. I was aware of rustlings in the grass, ringed ploplets of water circling in the ditch; the soft rush of a bird in alarm as it left the dark hedgerow. I knelt upright and looked back towards Timothy Street. Two trees that grew thinly in the earth midway between the houses and the hollow where I lay, splintered the light that shone from the windows, dividing and subdividing each pane of orange glass, so that the whole row of houses moved and shimmered with myriad points of light. A precise clapping sound began behind my head, and turning, I saw a train flickering along the horizon, compartments sending a small glow into the darkness, illuminating the wooden posts beside the railway line. Though it was so late and I knew my parents would be anxious and angry, I could not feel alarmed. The train moved compactly on; a red rear light trailed into the night; the sound of wheels grew fainter in the distance and dissolved away.

  If I never went home again, but stayed here in the grass till I died of starvation, that would solve everything. I felt this sincerely and felt unhappy, but I still wanted to laugh. The humour of the situation grew. I dreamed a scene between the doctor and myself.

  ‘But you were very close to death, my dear. Why did you just lie there?’

  ‘Because I saw Mrs Biggs and the Tsar on the couch.’

  The doctor turned a critical face to my mother suffering at the end of the bed.

  ‘She is still delirious. A severe shock you know.’

  The fantasy unfolded in my brain, tentative shoots probed crabwise into the recesses of the night; figures with lanterns stumbled over my body, the child’s chest rising shallowly, body slender at last in near death, lips murmuring in delirium … I saw Mrs Biggs and the Tsar on the couch.

  When Harriet all but trod on me I screamed sharply with shock. ‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘It’s terribly late.’

  ‘It would be better not to go home at all now,’ I said unable to see her face in the darkness. Harriet thought about it.

  ‘It would be lovely in the woods. Quite warm too. But we’d have to go home in the morning, and then what would we say?’ I imagined sleeping on the floor of warm leaf mould under the branches, wind blowing in from the sea, a murmur of incoming tide more vast than by day. A sinister insidious sound of water stretching along the coast, enveloping slowly the broad sands.

  ‘We’ll have to go now,’ said Harriet.

  The nearer we came to the lane the slower we walked. Even Harriet was alarmed at the lateness of the hour, afraid of her predictable father. At the gate of my house Mother waited in a flurry of anger. Inside the house my fear evaporated as she spoke sharply to me.

  ‘What do you mean by staying out till this time? How dare you cause us so much worry. Where have you been?’

  Each question dissipated a little of her anger. Head bent humbly I did not answer. It was not expected of me. My father had gone to bed very worried. My mother had stopped him phoning the police to say we were missing. Harriet’s father had been on the phone twice to see if she was here. It was almost half past eleven … Did I know that?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured.

  I could go to bed now. In the morning my mother would be cold and distant with me but by afternoon friendly and loving once more. My father would look sullenly at me and bring back sweets when he returned from work. Everything would be the same, tomorrow.

  9

  I could not find my notebook.

  We each had a book in which to write down our impressions of people we might meet. I had carried it in the pocket of my school blazer when we visited Timothy Street. I sat helplessly in my bedroom, feeling ill at the implications of such a loss. If I had dropped it in the garden and Mrs Biggs found it, nothing could save me. There was nothing in it because we tore out each page on completion and placed it in the box with the diary. But my address was on the cover for all to read: No. 4 Sea Lane, Formby, Lanes, England, Europe, The World.

  Harriet looked grave when I told her, but for once was unable to advise how to act. She sat moodily on the bed, forbidden to go out. Her judicious father had hit her about the head the night before. She said he laid strong palms about her ears, measuring each blow, swearing all the time. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if I have a father-complex later,’ she said. I went with stealth down the stairs to the front door, avoiding her parents successfully, and let myself out into the garden.

  I had not missed the notebook till after tea; Mrs Biggs, should she have searched the garden after last night’s intrusion, had already had nine hours in which to find it. It was now a little after six, and the Tsar would be home from work. Either I walked to the shore in the hope of a chance meeting, and there appealed to him to find the notebook, or I went alone now to Timothy Street, and searched the garden. Since the night of the fair we had not met, at least to his knowledge, and it was probable he might go out in the hope of seeing me. I could tell him we were playing a joke, that Harriet and I had been in the garden for fun—he need not know we had watched through the curtain—and that I was afraid I had dropped the notebook when we ran away.

  The fear that seized me at the thought of Mrs Biggs calling on my mother, left no room for embarrassment at seeing the Tsar. Besides, the scene on the couch had shown the unimaginable to be pitiful; a function as empty of dignity and significance as brushing one’s teeth. The darkness had heightened the tension and mystery, but it was Mrs Biggs who had put out the lights. It was her I hated, not the Tsar. Henceforth I could wait, without tarantella nerves, for the Tsar to lay his lips on mine, remembering he had loved Mrs Biggs, times without number, long before I was born.

  My mother had said I was to be out for no more than an hour. Supposing they had thought us thieves last night, and Mrs Biggs, nervous, asked the Tsar to stay indoors in deference to her fears. I would only waste time going to the shore. Still I hovered there, outside Harriet’s house, unable to make a decision. A figure turned the corner beyond the Cottage Hospital, walking close to the lemon wall, head bent, hands in pockets. Though I could not see his face I recognised the elegant walk, the fastidious feet pacing the lane. I ran into the garden, consumed with excitement, and whistled under Harriet’s window.

  ‘Harriet, Harriet, he’s here, he’s coming down the lane.’

  Harriet disappeared from the open window immediately, and I ran backwards and forwards over the lawn, not daring to peer into the lane in case he saw me, but unable to be calm. When Harriet opened the door I almost knocked her over in m
y excitement, thrusting her backwards into the hall.

  ‘Harriet, what shall we do? He’s in the lane.’

  ‘Shut the door.’ She pushed her head under the frilled curtain to watch through the glass. A bird hopped warily over the grass, wings folded close, bright eyes searching the soil.

  ‘Are you sure you saw him?’ Harriet turned her bridal veiled head and touched my cheeks with her hand.

  ‘Are you sure you just didn’t feel emotional again?’

  The bird flew swiftly up into the trees as the Tsar entered the gate. Harriet held my hand firmly and led me into the back room where her parents sat.

  ‘Father,’ she said, ‘Mr Biggs is coming up the path.’

  A neighbourly expression transfused her father’s face. A jovial smile softened the mouth habitually severe; he cleared his throat, self-consciously.

  ‘Oh, good. I expect he wants to see me. Better put the kettle on, Mother.’ Importantly he went out into the hall.

  Harriet’s mother placed coquettish hands to her hair, patting the waves more securely above her forehead. She was never deliberate in her flirtatiousness, it was more a habit than anything else. Her husband called her his ‘little woman’, and with all men she was bright and coy. So now she preened herself for the task in hand, bending and plumping the cushions adroitly, straightening the drab table runner, hiding the newspaper behind the wireless. She spoke worriedly to Harriet before going into the kitchen.

  ‘Just sit quiet on the sofa, and don’t interrupt your father more than you can help.’

  Voices were loud in the hall. The Tsar laughed. I felt there was very little in his life to laugh at, and sat clenching my hands behind my back; nostrils and throat were constricted, a sweet spasm of shuddering gripped and as abruptly left my body, leaving me inert on the sofa. Harriet’s mother came out of the kitchen, and greeted the Tsar profusely. He stood in the doorway, bowing slightly, hidden by her body, surrounded by friendliness. Then he straightened and saw Harriet and me on the couch under the window. A moment of indecision, eyes meeting briefly; then he walked boldly to us. Harriet pressed her arm hard against my side; there was a soft rush of air as her mouth opened widely to smile; the pressure of her arm strengthened as if she sensed my growing thoughtlessness. I cared nothing for her warning, nothing for the tableau before me. The man of justice poised by the door, the woman in the act of placing a saucer on the table, seemed to swivel round in the room and become unfocused. I stared with wonder at the Tsar. I felt quite safe. I was there by intent, not accident. I had been put on the sofa by Harriet’s mother. None could stop me looking at him, not even Harriet.