Harriet Said

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘She’ll give me half an hour more,’ he said, ‘assuming that it’s ten o’clock. Then she’ll come down the lane in search of me.’

  ‘What about the windows?’ I said carefully, unable to see his expression, but knowing that it must be weak and despairing. At least my fear was real, I had cause to be afraid; at thirteen it was natural my parents should be angry and upset if I returned late home. I was not a grown man, married thirty years, who had taken the initiative under the beech leaves. I felt elated and superior to him grown so flabby in his relationship with Mrs Biggs, and wondered if this were part of Harriet’s plan.

  ‘They’re too high,’ said the Tsar, looking up into the darkness. ‘Besides, they only open at the top.’ He moved his hands along the wall beside the door, his nails making a tiny scratching sound as they grated against the stone.

  ‘The light switches are all outside in the porch,’ I said, sounding almost gleeful in the darkness.

  It was a very good plan of Harriet’s, and I was sure now it was a plan.

  Only she could have thought of something so exquisitely subtle, so calculated to show the Tsar as a frail creature, limited by relationships such as we knew. I had only to tell the truth at home, and most of the anger would be mitigated. ‘Someone locked me in the church,’ I would say, or ‘A ghost shut the door. I was terrified.’

  The Tsar was gliding down the church, striking matches every yard, to enable him to see better. I followed him, feeling my way with hands on the pew rows, stamping my feet down firmly so that he would know I was following. He opened a door and light flooded out across the altar steps, from the vestry. A row of white cassocks hung on pegs, frilled out and lay back again on the cream wall.

  ‘Good,’ said the Tsar, moving round the room hopefully looking for keys, face wrinkled under the bulb of electricity. We crossed eagerly from corner to corner, buoyed up with expectancy, pulling aside the cassocks and the verger’s black gown, searching for keys, enjoying throwing the garments untidily to the floor. The one cupboard was bare save for an old hat of the Canon’s, and a pair of small football boots. The desk under the window contained only some sticky-backed pictures issued to the Sunday school, and one woollen glove knitted in green. Everything reminiscent of white-clouded Sunday afternoons—the picture on the wall that used to be in the Children’s corner, the special plate for us to put our pennies in—conspired to make the night more strange, and fringed it with a lunatic delight, the delight of searching the Canon’s vestry without stealth. How lovely, in spite of the lateness of the hour and the trouble no doubt to come, the situation was.

  ‘Damn,’ said the Tsar worriedly, standing in the middle of the room. There were no keys to find.

  I tried to think what Harriet would do in such an extremity. Break the stained-glass windows or burn down the door with the Tsar’s futile little matches? Both measures seemed equally awe-inspiring in their finality.

  ‘Mr Biggs,’ I said politely, ‘we could break one of the windows.’

  The Tsar was too worried to reply; he stood like a man might who had been hunted for days, and was now trapped with his back to the wall. I thought that any tender shoot of love that was to have flourished between us, was now cruelly underfoot. He must be tired and bitter at all the trouble Harriet and I had caused him. I didn’t think Harriet had meant that to happen.

  The Tsar leaned against the cream wall and studied the windowless room. The vestry door, though smaller than the main door into the churchyard, was as thick and sturdy, and he could never hope to force it open. He looked up at the vaulted ceiling and shook his head hopelessly.

  ‘I’m sorry, child, God knows what time it is.’

  I allowed my face to become tragic and upset.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ He patted my arm bravely. ‘We’ll get out somehow.’

  I did not feel I could convincingly remain the helpless little girl, at least not for very long. If it were left to him we might possibly die here and be found helpless and skeleton-ribbed on the vestry floor when the Canon eventually opened the church next Sunday. I said, ‘Mr Biggs, I’m going to break one of the windows if I can.’

  ‘No,’ he said petulantly, ‘no, be sensible. You can’t do that.’

  With noble face and eagle heart, remembering Mrs Biggs had called him weak, I said in my determined voice, walking to the open door, ‘You’d better help me for I mean to do it.’

  The church was huge and black with darkness; I had to tell myself that trees in winter looked different from those in summer, that it was only a seasonal difference. The church by day was the same as now, I had nothing to fear.

  I spread my hands in front of me, coaxing the wall to come nearer, feet splayed out cautiously like a matador. In the corner near the side altar the canon kept a window pole. I had only to feel along the brass rail and remember him Sunday upon Sunday advancing to the corner, luscious mouth parted a little, hand outstretched, and I would find it. ‘God’s pure air, children’ he had said as he opened the window. Triumphantly I shouted. ‘It’s here, Mr Biggs, come and help me.’

  His voice in the darkness was low and upset. I felt sorry for him then.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  How often had Harriet made me feel dominated and ineffectual, so that I answered her repeated orders in just such a voice of self pity and suffering.

  ‘Here is the window pole’—I spoke briskly to cover the giggle in my voice—‘we must put the hook in the window ring and haul ourselves up on to the sill. There’s only one window we can break, the third one. You can tell it by feel. It’s the only one that got damaged in the war and they replaced it with colored glass. We have to stand against the pane and smash hard at the bottom and when it gives jump on to the grass. We both run to the gate into the woods, so that if anyone hears us we’ll have plenty of cover under the trees. You run up the dunes above the tadpole ponds and I’ll go over the fields near the barracks. We will be much safer if we separate.’ I felt Harriet would be proud of me.

  The Tsar said ‘Yes’ in an expressionless way, and struck a match, holding it between cupped hands till it burned more fiercely, and held it out. His eyes in the small glow of light were arched wide as he looked at length of pole I held. The expression of immense surprise faded and died as the match went out.

  ‘Give it to me,’ he said. ‘You go and put off the light in the vestry.’

  His hands as they circled my fingers felt dry and cold. I let go of the pole and stepped back quickly.

  It took me a long time to reach the vestry, because the small light that seeped from the doorway did little to alleviate the darkness. I could look fixedly at it and make for its goal, but my feet and body moved heavily in the blackness. When I reached the door and put up my hand to the light switch I paused and thought there might be something else Harriet would wish me to do. I opened the drawer and pulled out the sticky-backed pictures and looked at them. On all of them a fair angelic Jesus stared out blindly with eyes of cobalt blue. If I had a pencil, I told myself, I would draw moustaches on them all, honestly I would. I was glad I had no pencil. I switched the light off and closed the door and stood with my back to it. I shouted, ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Here.’

  I started to move cautiously back along the way I had come, moving in the direction of his voice. His breathing, agitated with effort, filled the church. ‘Here,’ he shouted, ‘here.’ When I reached him he told me to keep on striking matches to give him light to find the ring at the top of the window. Endlessly I did as he instructed. There never seemed to have been a time when we had not been imprisoned in the church among the trees. Beyond the pines the tide must have ebbed and flowed for generations without number, while we struggled to hook the pole on to the window. Then it was done. The Tsar said nothing but gave a grunt of relief. He stopped straggling and stood still, hand upstretched.

  ‘Well done,’ I said, bolstering him, although now it hardly mattered. I waited a moment before telling him what
I wanted him to do because I did not like to bully.

  He laughed suddenly and said, ‘What an impossible position to be in,’ and laughed again, this time more loudly.

  ‘When you’re ready you’d better climb on to the pew behind you and jump against the wall, both feet out to meet it. Put your hands as high up the pole as you can, so that it won’t unhook as you jump.’ Bravely the Tsar scrambled upright on the back of the pew. I struck a match to help him to estimate his leap but it died almost at once. He launched himself at the wall and a groan of pain rose softly out of the church.

  What’s wrong?’

  There was no reply, only a sound of hurried breathing and feet slithering on the stone wall. A noise of laborious crawling, as if some strange primeval crab moved towards the window sill above my head. Then I could see the dark outline of the Tsar in a tortured mass against the glass, the pole held tight to his head.

  ‘There’s nothing to hold on to.’ His voice was high-pitched and distressed. ‘I can’t let go of the pole.’

  ‘It’s all right. Hold the pole in your left hand and move as far along the sill as you can.’ It was easy to tell him, ‘There’s a cord round a hook on the wall. Feel for that but don’t jerk the pole.’ The Tsar did not move. Angrily I shouted, ‘Go on, it’ll be all right.’

  He must have felt abandoned and furious now as he was forced to move along the thin sloping sill, seeing confused shadows of trees swaying outside in the churchyard.

  I was conscious of being very tired. The effort of moving the Tsar into position, the strain of compelling him to carry out my plan made me realise the power and drive Harriet needed to be always manipulating and coaxing me along the lines she desired.

  ‘I’ve found it.’

  The Tsar seemed to be spreadeagled in a starfish of arms and legs against the window. The pole jutted out like a third elongated limb. I stood on the end of the pew and felt for the end of it.

  ‘Let go,’ I ordered. ‘You hang on to the hook and move further over.’

  He nearly fell. His body ballooned outwards, invisible hands clawing at the glass. Then he folded inwards breathing heavily. I wanted to laugh at the fuss he was making. He was so awfully bad at this sort of thing even though he had lived for years.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. When you jump mind you don’t knock your face.’ I showed my teeth in the darkness and tilted out towards the wall on raised feet and hauled on the pole, pulling myself slowly up to the sill, keeping my eyes to the window, to the faint greyness that was not light but was not total darkness.

  ‘Mr Biggs,’ I said feverishly, ‘Mr Biggs, I can’t get any higher.’ He began to edge along the sill, one hand clutching the hook in the wall, the other groping for me.

  ‘Can you get hold of my arm?’ His voice was stronger now that he was in a position to help me.

  It was very difficult; the Tsar balanced on a narrow ledge grasping a pole that might slip free of its hook, and I pulling frantically at his raincoat to lever myself upright. When finally I lay along his back, crucified against him like one of the saints in the window he leaned his cheek upon, we both stayed there helpless, unable to move. If after all Harriet had come back and unlocked the door, I would not have stirred.

  ‘You’re a heavy girl,’ said the Tsar at last I hated him. I hadn’t remembered that I was stout, I had thought how fragile and childlike I must seem clinging to his superior strength. I tried to ease away from him and nearly fell, clutching at him convulsively so that he groaned.

  ‘I’m sorry. I nearly lost my balance.’ He did not reply, he did not seem to breathe.

  At last he asked me, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ He meant more possibly than the words conveyed. A question of the future and what it was Harriet and I expected of him.

  ‘Mr Biggs, is the pole very heavy?’

  ‘It’s an awkward length, that’s all. It’s too damned short to rest on the floor and too long to hold easily.’

  ‘Well, swing it inwards and lean on the glass. If it doesn’t break, let go of the pole at once.’

  Secretly I doubted if the glass would even crack, so thick and hard it felt I waited a long time, then the Tsar said, ‘I’m going to try now. Are you ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said bravely, voice thin in the darkness.

  There was a sound like ice breaking, a sharp clean noise, and then a slithering free as the pane fell out. I heard the pole fall behind me as the night air rushed to meet my face and I landed heavily on the grass. The soil was so cool and the ground so firm that I wanted just to lie there, but I stood up and ran along the path to the gate into the woods. The gate was difficult to open, jammed tight by the heap of dead flowers and wreaths that littered the path. Harriet had a collection of memoriam cards edged with black that she had salvaged from the pile. She kept them in a special folder and wrote little postscripts to each one.

  ‘Mr Biggs!’ I shouted. ‘Mr Biggs!’

  Such an escape we had made, how cleverly I had freed us. The trees distilled a sweet smell of beech and pine; the fragrance of summer days cradled the woods and rose up from the cinnamon brown earth. The thought that I had achieved so much without Harriet to guide me filled me with exhilaration. What mattered if I was only thirteen and my parents liked me in bed by ten o’clock I did not care if they called the police and locked me finally in my room. The round dark wound in the side of the church, the window splattered among the graves could easily be remedied by the Tsar sending some money, without his name, to the Canon.

  I was hurrying across the field that lay in front of the army camp, making for the station. When I climbed the wall into the road I saw the figure of a man crouched under the lamp at the foot of the hill. He was holding a handkerchief to his face.

  ‘What is it, did you cut yourself?’

  He looked so pale and hurt, thick blood running into his mouth. ‘I banged my nose as I fell,’ he said with difficulty, dabbing at his nostrils with the stained cloth. What a petty injury to have. He had smashed a window, leaped into the grass but he had only managed to bang his nose.

  ‘How did you do that? I landed on my feet on the grass.’

  ‘You were lucky. There’s a concrete verge right round the walls.’

  ‘Look, I must go. My parents probably have the police looking for me.’

  I ran on up the hill strongly, leaving him huddled under the lamp. A car breasted the hill, fierce headlights swept my face as it slowed to the kerb.

  ‘Dad, I’m so glad.’

  I opened the door and fell inside and started to cry. ‘It’s been dreadful, I’ve been so frightened.’ He was quite silent, slumped over the wheel in massive reproach.

  ‘I was in the woods and I saw a woman running through the trees, wearing a cloak. She had blood all over her face.’

  He started the engine and turned the car, driving back over the hill.

  ‘Just before I saw her I heard a crash from the church, like a window breaking … it was dreadful, Dad.’

  I let myself sink into the waves of grief that tore over me, spurred on by his silence, convinced he knew I was lying. We stopped outside the house and he helped me out, still not speaking. A light shone in the hall; the door was open and Mother stood on the step, small and defenceless.

  ‘What is it, George? Is she all right?’

  ‘God knows what the hell happened. It’s beyond me.’

  I was led into the kitchen. The light was so harsh I had to shut my eyes against it.

  ‘Mother, I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t, it was the lady in the woods.’ I clung to her unable to bear her credulous face.

  ‘She shouldn’t go into those damn woods with all those blighters from the camp roaming the blasted place.’

  Throughout my story Dad’s face seemed about to smile. I felt the absurdity of the story irritated him though he could not prove I was lying. My mother asked me questions sharply and coldly, but when I broke down she folded me in her arms and rocked me, big as I was
, on her knee.

  At last I was able to go to bed. I lay in the dark wide-eyed. I had avoided real displeasure, I had been kissed, I had explained the broken window. They would never trace it to me, the more so as Harriet had been home early. I had lied very well and cried effortlessly; I would look white and ill in the morning. I thought of the beautiful night and my god-like strength in the church and I began to smile when I remembered the Tsar’s banged nose under the lamp. Harriet could not have managed better.

  11

  Harriet’s father saw the Tsar in the city with his arm in a sling. Harriet said perhaps he had only sprained it when he jumped from the window, and it was probably not a serious injury. She offered to call on Mrs Biggs but I said it was unwise to go so soon after the adventure in the garden.

  We talked at length about the evening I had been locked in the church with the Tsar, but she did not say she had closed the door. We wrote in the diary that we had been mysteriously imprisoned by persons unknown, but I knew it was Harriet. I wanted to ask her if it was part of the plan but I was afraid she might call me stupid. She told me her father had said the Tsar usually crossed the river on the ferry boat on a Wednesday to visit the firm’s other factory.

  ‘We’ll go tomorrow,’ she said. ‘We’ll tell them we’re going to the museum and they’ll be delighted.’

  ‘He mightn’t go after all, not if his arm is bad.’

  ‘We’ll go anyway.’

  We travelled on a morning train. I was made to wear my school uniform but Harriet said it slimmed me down anyway. We went on a tram to the docks, bouncing up and down on the wooden seats. The landing stage was littered with papers and refuse and old men in white mufflers sat on benches and stared out to sea. We sat beside them for a time waiting for the boat to come in, trying to adopt just such an attitude of forgetfulness and isolation, but we were too alive. They did not look directly at anything, not even at the gulls that circled and screamed above the oily stretch of water. Harriet said they had the view imprinted on their eyes long ago, and only thought of distant things connected with the landscape.