Harriet Said

by Beryl Bainbridge

  She said, ‘Hallo, Mr Biggs.’

  He sat on the chair beside the table, white shirt against dark suit, city shoes of black leather beating a tattoo against the leg of the table. A thin hand splayed out on his knee, the middle finger stained with nicotine; handkerchief tipping his breast pocket, eyes small in his sallow face. No longer the Tsar of the night of the fair and the father kiss, nor the puppet Tsar on the couch behind curtained windows. A new Tsar of offices and daily work, one who talked business with other men, and carried a brief-case to the city. I watched the adults talking pleasantly and felt marooned with Harriet on the sofa, almost a feeling that I was indeed a child.

  Why didn’t he have children? Why didn’t they make a child out of the nights spent under the beech leaves?

  The Tsar was saying, ‘So I’m afraid I won’t, regrettably, be able to play golf on Saturday.’

  ‘Oh, too bad.’ Harriet father’s mouth drooped in disappointment at a routine violated. His pleasure at the Tsar’s visit soured. He drummed petulant fingers on the arm of the chair. Brightly his wife poured out tea, little finger crooked genteelly, wrist arched with the weight of the pot.

  ‘What a shame, dear, but there’s always another day.’

  Another day. The, notebook lost in the vengeful Mrs Biggs’s garden; the impending visit to my mother, face righteous, voice gravely telling the awful story. Childhood fled from me, I sat upright and watched the clock. I would have to leave very soon, my mother would be waiting.

  Harriet leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, staring at the Tsar with interest.

  ‘Mr Biggs, why did you stop wearing glasses?’

  Her mother looked at her and then at the Tsar, her face expressing the hope that Harriet was not being rude.

  The Tsar said, ‘I broke so many pairs I just gave up wearing them.’

  I felt he was ashamed in front of me at the admission. I wished I knew if I only imagined he cared for me, it seemed so strange the things I attributed to him. I did not know where the dream and reality merged, I did not know anything.

  ‘I may have to wear glasses soon,’ I lied. What was the point of it? What did I mean him to understand? It was seven o’clock and I dare not stay any longer. I hated the bulk of me standing up in the room, clumsily moving to the door, self-consciously saying good night, avoiding their eyes. He stood up when I did, and for a moment I thought he too was taking his departure, but it was only a blessed politeness. Did he stand up for me because he thought me a woman? I beseeched Harriet silently to come to the door with me, but the only rocked gently on the sofa and said casually, ‘Good night dear,’ and left it to her mother to accompany me into the hall.

  For two evenings and two days I waited for Mrs Biggs to ring the bell, and disturb the credulous mind of my mother.

  Harriet told me to write in the diary, ‘I am waiting now only for Mrs B. to call with the notebook. All the hours pass waiting for the fulfilment of this. I can neither eat nor sleep …’ I felt this was a little dramatic, but it was true, and no other words seemed to evoke clearly what I was suffering.

  On the third day, when still Mrs Biggs had not called, a faint hope filled me. She had found the notebook, but would feel foolish telling my mother, and she was not going to tell her. Harriet agreed this might be so, and told me not to worry.

  ‘It’s a closed incident, dear. You must forget it.’

  While we still could not go walking in the evening and were restricted to one hour after tea, we spent the time writing in the diary. One passage in particular puzzled me. Harriet dictated, ‘If two people commit a sin, it is a bad thing. If one person commits a sin with another, it is worse. The passive one is the person most guilty, and should be punished for betraying himself …’ Then she made me write, ‘Events must be logically concluded. We must be tidy.’ When I questioned her about it she was only evasive.

  ‘I’m right,’ was all she would say. ‘Really I am, trust me.’

  ‘But, Harriet, I feel funny about him.’ There was no reply. She lay on her bed and would not look at me.

  ‘Harriet, you know the way you would not let me see what you had written about the boy in Wales?’ I tried to sound at ease but it was an appeal.

  ‘Yes.’ She was looking at me now.

  ‘Well, I feel that way about the Tsar.’

  ‘What way? What way is that?’

  Dare I say it? Even the relationship between us was changing. I ought not to have to explain.

  ‘What on earth are you going on about?’

  I spoke self-consciously, running the words together in embarrassment.

  Shall my heart remain my own?

  Oh the tears upon his cheeks;

  Do I dare to walk alone?

  How the beech leaves pale and whiten,

  How still the little churchyard lies.

  Let compassion shut my eyes.

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ asked Harriet, but not crossly. ‘I wrote that after we met those boys from the remand home when I took my clothes off and you wouldn’t because your knickers were filthy.’

  ‘They weren’t filthy,’ I protested. ‘I told you, they were my mum’s and they were pink with awful lace.’

  ‘Well, so what?’

  ‘I love Mr Biggs,’ I said, and wondered instantly why I had called him that. It sounded so funny—‘I love Mr Biggs’.

  Harriet sat up. ‘In that case we better hurry. There’s not much of the holidays left.’

  I resented the ‘we’. It wasn’t we who loved the Tsar, it was I alone.

  ‘But I don’t know that I want it to be an experience,’ I said miserably. ‘I don’t think I want it to be something for the diary.’

  Harriet spoke in the same reasonable way she talked to her mother.

  ‘At thirteen there is very little you can expect to salvage from loving someone but experience. You’ll go back to school for years, you’ll wear a gym tunic long after all this is over. What do you expect? No one will let you love yet. You’re not expected to. They don’t even know how to do it themselves. And all he’ll feel for you is a sort of gentle nostalgia. No—bring it to a logical conclusion. If you don’t you’ll feel emotional for ages over something that was pretty trivial.’

  ‘But what if we find it’s not trivial?’ I was appalled by the wisdom of us both. It seemed unnatural. Why had I not noticed it before?

  ‘Don’t let’s suppose,’ Harriet said efficiently. ‘Now write in the diary what I tell you. “This man is a very complex one. He seems to like to suffer. It is a very great weakness and one that she (the wife) has helped to cultivate. We saw him on the couch in an attitude of resignation, and we thought the wife was to blame. But now we are not so sure of this. We caught a glimpse of their life through the window and we found it disgusting and abasing. He should not submit to a woman like that. Obviously he is a victim and likes to be punished.”’

  ‘But we don’t know, Harriet, we can’t be sure.’

  Harriet went on firmly, ‘We must work quickly to punish him in a way he will not like.’ I wrote it down in my best handwriting and felt uneasy.

  Voices could be heard bouncing in a tight ball against the ceiling. I stopped writing and listened.

  ‘Are they quarrelling?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet.

  I was interested. Harriet said they often quarrelled and that it was terrible when they did because the little woman began to cry, and the father grew more bullying to protect himself.

  ‘Open the door,’ said Harriet, and placed her hands palm downwards against the floorboards, as if to brace herself for an inevitable shock. I did as I was told. Two voices were raised and both were angry and I looked at Harriet inquiringly because I knew the little woman was not given to argument. Harriet shook her head and whispered, ‘They can’t be quarrelling … unless they’re both angry about the same thing.’

  We tried hard to hear what it was they said, tried to piece words together but it was difficult, unti
l suddenly the father clearly said, ‘Right!’, and the door below opened and his voice shouted fearfully loud, ‘Harriet, come here!’

  Harriet did not move. She stared at me with wide eyes, mouth open, unable to breathe.

  ‘Harriet, do you hear?’

  Harriet got to her feet and crept over to the window. She cupped her hand over her mouth and called, ‘What is it?’

  The hand over her mouth made it seem as if the bedroom door was shut and she had not heard properly. She motioned me frantically with extravagant hands to close the door. The father below called once more.

  ‘Come down!’

  All was quiet; the parents waited in the silence. Harriet leaned against the window, she pressed her nose to the glass.

  ‘You’ll have to go.’

  I was frightened that the father would come upstairs and fetch her.

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Harriet sullenly. She kicked with her foot at the skirting-board and hunched her shoulders. Moving to the door, her face in shadow, she passed me humiliated. Before she had reached the bottom of the narrow stairs the voice called,

  ‘Both of you, please.’

  Harriet looked up at me to where I stood on the landing and stared at me. I could not be sure whether she wanted me to walk downstairs and out of the house and defy her father, slamming the door loudly and whistling easily as I shut the gate behind me. I just followed her down the steps and entered the living-room.

  Her father sat with deception in his chair by the fire, pushing his feet against the fender, easing his toes more surely into his brown slippers. The little woman with despairing face stood with her back to the fire, and touched her cheek with one hand as if to reassure herself.

  ‘Now,’ said her father, smiling pleasantly at me, ‘I’m just going to ask a plain question and I want a plain answer. None of your clever talk, Harriet, do you understand?’

  He gave a vicious little toss of his head and turned to her. If Harriet understood she gave no sign, but stood looking out of the window into the dark shrouded garden. Her mother leaned forward to poke the fire unnecessarily and a live coal fell into the brown-tiled hearth. He looked at her with distaste at this and pouted his lips bad-temperedly. The noise irritated his already inflamed nerves.

  ‘What were you doing round at Mr Biggs’s house the other night?’

  At once my mind turned and spun out intricate patterns of invention. I had felt faint as we passed the Tsar’s house and Harriet had dragged me on to the grass. We had banged the window to get help … because I needed help. I was always feeling faint; I was ill. I had not felt well for a long time now; the doctor thought I was growing too fast. Harriet was saying, ‘We went for a walk. We felt like an apple so we went into the garden.

  She bent down over the back of the empty rocking chair, swaying forward with it, letting her plaits hang down to brush against the green cushion. Her mother swept industriously at the ash in the hearth, flushed with the heat from the fire. She tightened her grip on the brittle brass rod of the ornamental brush, waiting for the blow to fall.

  ‘I see. You went to pick apples.’ Her father leaned back, smiling now, his hands touching only at the tips of his fingers, as if in delicate prayer. ‘And what else did you do beside picking apples?’

  ‘What do you mean? We ate the apples … why?’

  ‘Perhaps you remember what else you did, eh?’ He looked at me over his hands and waited.

  ‘Well we just … I mean we looked at the window. We didn’t do much, honestly.’

  I had betrayed myself and Harriet. I had appealed to the man. I had defended myself involuntarily by the use of the word ‘honestly’. Harriet stopped rocking the chair and hung motionless, head down.

  ‘Well, I won’t have it, do you hear. I won’t have it.’ Blood suffused his face; an angry vein throbbed in his temple.

  ‘Your mother had a visit from Mrs Biggs today. She said you spied on them through the window. She doesn’t like it, do you hear?’

  Harriet stared at her father. ‘How did she know we looked through the window?’

  ‘Because she did. I’m asking the questions.’ His voice strengthened. He seemed to be filling himself with air, ready to blast us from the room.

  He began to bully Harriet in earnest. He shouted with eyes dark with emotion. Her mother and I stayed as grieved onlookers, relieved to be watching. As Harriet remained silent, he became threatening. The more he shouted and lost control, the more difficult became his position, and as yet he could not say why it was so wrong of us to spy through the window. Naughty, yes, but not wicked.

  He was afraid of what Harriet might say in reply. He was afraid even now she would ask him, and he shouted rather to drown her question should it come, than because he was righteously angry. I began to feel sorry for him. Harriet was so strong in battle; even I was strong. He had not the courage to tell her what worried him, that we were young girls, that the Tsar was a funny fellow, wandering down to the shore on his own, that there had been incidents in the past never properly explained, involving Harriet and men. Instead he said that we mustn’t go round to the house any more, that we had to be indoors earlier, that it was about time we realised we were growing up. At this Harriet permitted herself a small smile, and looked down at the carpet with pretended amusement. Finally she said:

  ‘But what is so awful about peeping through Mr Biggs’s window, Father?’

  It was very cruel. He threw himself forward in his seat and glared at her. His hands gripped the arms of his chair furiously and impotently. He was choking with the hurt and fear he felt, and his round blue eyes stared for a moment at Harriet as if she were a landscape utterly barren, distorted by lightning and unknown. Then he said brokenly, ‘Good God, girl!’ He got up and stood broadly over her as if to make her fall down, overpowered by the bulk of him, but Harriet mercilessly looked up at him, eyebrows arched inquiringly.

  ‘You talk to her.’ He turned to her mother. ‘I’m through, blast her. Let her go to the devil.’

  He went to the door, and as he moved his slipper came off his left foot, and rather than return and struggle into it he kicked it away from him and slammed the door. He shouted all the way upstairs; we could hear him repeating endlessly that he was through, through, until the bedroom door closed on him. The slipper stood on end against the far wall, shabby and badly out of shape.

  While her father was in the room, Harriet had seemed the victor. Now that he lay muttering on his bed upstairs, chanting that he was through, all through, we felt guilty and deflated. Harriet leaned her head dejectedly against the mantelpiece. She said to her white-faced mother:

  ‘What have we done wrong, little woman? Why did he go on like that?’

  I knew that Harriet was upset because the little woman had been exposed to the scene, that she wanted to comfort her.

  ‘I think you’re extremely unkind, Harriet.’

  Her mother spoke formally in front of me.

  ‘You know why you shouldn’t go round to Mr Biggs’s house, especially not in their garden, looking through their window. It’s not nice behaviour … He just doesn’t want you to do anything you’ll regret … He’s so proud of you and you do everything you can to antagonise him.’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t have told him. You know how stupid he is.’

  The muttering upstairs broke out afresh.

  ‘Put the wireless on, dear.’

  Her mother was so resigned and kind it was awful. Harriet turned on the wireless to drown the sound of her father’s voice, in case the neighbours should hear. I knew this because Harriet had told me that when she came home from school and the wireless was on, she knew there had been trouble and her father was in a temper. I wondered if along the whole row of houses and back rooms the wireless hummed out its message. Her mother hated the wireless at other times and refused to have it switched on. Cheerful dance-music filled the room. It might have been a holiday the way the tune spun and spiralled among us.

  Her m
other continued, ‘For Heaven’s sake, dear, try to see it from his point of view for a change.’ The little woman warmed to her task and became almost coherent. ‘If you don’t mind about him at least consider me a little. It’s not you that bears the brunt of it. He’ll be in a mood for days. I can’t stand it. You know how low it makes me.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Harriet sounded desperate.

  After a pause her mother said, ‘I did say to Mrs Biggs that she could not expect me to believe such an extraordinary tale without some sort of proof. I did say that.’

  It was strange. The little woman sought to justify herself to us.

  ‘What extraordinary tale?’ asked Harriet gently, as if dealing with a child unable to tell right from wrong. ‘What did she tell you?’

  ‘She said you were in her garden the other night, the front garden, and that you knocked on the window and swore at them, and ran away. Were you in the garden?’

  I waited for Harriet to answer. I would have denied it utterly but, as I expected, she said in the same gentle tone, ‘Yes, we were. I did knock on the window. I said damn you, but I wasn’t swearing.’

  Harriet’s mother sat in the armchair, not knowing what to say.

  ‘But why?’ she asked finally. ‘What on earth possessed you to do such a wicked thing?’

  Harriet smiled indulgently. ‘It wasn’t wicked, little woman, it was a joke.’