Harriet Said

by Beryl Bainbridge

  An old man on a bench further along began to whistle between his teeth, tapping his stick on the ground. When the red-red-robin goes bob-bob-bobbing a-long … A row of thin knees jerked up and down, a row of polished boots clumped in time to the tune. Any moment now, I thought, Harriet would fling arms wide and sing the words at the top of her voice. She was probably only waiting for a tired chorus of old women in shawls and tattered skirts to dance over the stones, massive bosoms a-bobbing, before she began. Seagulls flashed white wings in the sun, flying across the tin roof of the pier. The hands of the clocks that indicated the time of arrival of boats from Birkenhead and Wallasey moved jerkily into place. A woman with a pink face and yellow cardigan leaned against the rail. ‘Red-red-robin,’ sang Harriet loudly, stamping both feet and leaning out over the bench to smile at the row of old men. The whistling stopped, knees stiffened, boots rested heavily on the stones; the row of small eyes stared unresisting into the sun.

  We sat there for two hours, waiting for the Tsar, watching each passenger patiently and carefully. I was not quite sure what we were to do or say if we did see him, and when I asked Harriet, she said, ‘It doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that he should see us all the time, not only on the shore or in the woods. I want him to feel hemmed in.’

  I wondered if he had to feel hemmed in because he had called her evil. The love affair of the Tsar and me seemed to be forgotten. She had not even remembered to ask me if I had come to a more definite arrangement with him. She had not even asked me with great eagerness what he had said to me in the church.

  When we did see the Tsar, he was with a dark handsome little man with a black moustache. They alighted from the Wallasey boat talking quickly, placing tentative hands on the rail of the gangway, the Tsar turning sideways to look at the man’s face.

  ‘Hallo, Mr Biggs,’ said Harriet, screwing her face up fiendishly, standing before him with legs wide apart and hands behind her back. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

  The Tsar raised his hat to her uncertainly, and Harriet said, ‘We were just looking at the boats you know. We didn’t know you would be here. What have you been doing?’

  She smiled openly and with immense innocence at the dark little man beside the Tsar. He, like so many others, wanted immediately to confide in her. He leaned forward with a smile that was meant to be dashing, and said, ‘I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.’

  The Tsar hesitated; he seemed to shrink in the sunlight at the man’s awful vulgarity.

  ‘Two young friends of mine from Formby,’ he said. ‘This is Mr Douglas Hind.’

  Harriet and Mr Hind embarked on one of her long ceremonial conversations.

  ‘And what do you do with yourself these long summer days, dear?’

  ‘Isn’t that rather impertinent?’

  ‘Oh come now …’ the moustached man laughed delightedly.

  ‘Harriet’s father said you had your arm in a sling, Mr Biggs.’

  The Tsar rubbed his wrist at the thought.

  ‘Yes, I did, child. A bit of a sprain I think, nothing serious.’

  ‘Was she in the road when you got home?’

  He seemed to be searching the crowds on the landing stage for a familiar face. He half turned and touched his jaw with his fingers.

  ‘No, she wasn’t,’ he said abstractedly.

  Mr Hind laughed again, little moustache moving like a cork on the ocean of his lip.

  ‘How did you explain your wrist?’ I asked, wanting him to look at me.

  ‘I said a boy ran into me on his bicycle,’ said the Tsar.

  He did not smile. He looked unhappy. I wanted to make him happy again if Harriet would let me. Mr Hind touched the Tsar’s arm. ‘Peter, this young lady suggests a cup of coffee. Good idea, eh?’

  He smiled frankly at the Tsar and then at Harriet.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  The Tsar seemed to think anything would be preferable to standing in the open like this where anyone might see. Harriet and Mr Hind led the way into the snack-bar. It was all wrong, I knew that. We ought never to have spoken to him away from the shore. The trees and the church and the lane to the sea were the right borders for our relationship. It was a mistake to think we could function outside these boundaries.

  The Tsar stirred his coffee and looked out of the window, stretching his neck like a boy whose pride had been hurt. He swallowed repeatedly, his Adam’s apple moving unbeautifully in the thin discoloured throat.

  Flies circled lightly above a plate of iced cakes on the next table; a workman in overalls and peaked cap yawned vastly, showing white gums, and blew cigarette smoke at the flies.

  ‘Actually,’ said Harriet in a sweet childish voice, ‘I shall be fourteen in a few months’ time. Mummy says I can cut my hair then.’

  ‘Aaah … no.’ Mr Hind was unbearably shaken. He stretched forth a swarthy hand and lightly touched the plait that lay on Harriet’s shoulder.

  ‘No,’ he said sadly and foolishly, ‘don’t have it cut off.’

  The Tsar gave him a swift guilty look and turned away to the window not trusting himself to speak.

  ‘I don’t think,’ said Harriet, looking sorrowfully at Mr Hind, ‘that Mr Biggs cares for me very much.’

  Mr Hind leaned back in his chair and placed his hands behind his head, elbows spread upward like a kite.

  ‘Surely not. You’re a lucky fellow, Peter.’

  He dipped his body and dug at the Tsar’s shoulder with one sharp elbow.

  ‘I believe I am.’ The Tsar relaxed, sprawling a little over the table, eyes of friendship twinkling at Mr Hind.

  They were friends and confidants, I was sure. Even friends such as Harriet and I were, but separated by different ways of life. The Tsar had probably told him about the night in the church, but vulgarly, to match the mood of the moustached man. He had said, ‘Locked in—imagine, Douglas. Had me scampering over a window ledge with a damn big window pole.’ ‘What happened before that, eh?’ Mr Hind had asked with sly insinuation. ‘Oh, I tried to kiss the girl, but she wasn’t having any.’ Then they had both laughed loudly.

  Fascinated I watched the charred moustache springing above the moist mouth. The Tsar was so frail and yellow-skinned beside this man. He seemed to be made of hair. It waved crisply over his round head, growing down to the tips of his ears. Eyebrows, lashes, cheek-bones, lip, all dark and quivering with black hair. Hands, throat and neck shadowed with its profusion, Mr Hind spun and glowed in the sunlight. Under the table two legs brown and hard were covered too with a pelt of fur. It was as if a bumble bee hovered with three moths and the Tsar was the palest of the three.

  Harriet kicked my ankle with her shoe. I supposed Mr Hind was pressing her knee under the table, so I looked at her with a sympathetic excitement that conveyed something of envy too, and she glowed at me across the table, mouth curved at the corner in a pleased small smile of satisfaction. My envy was real because no one ever pressed my knee so quickly or so daringly, and though it was quite likely that Harriet had pressed his knee first I could not be so definite with the Tsar. I comforted myself with the thought that I was the more feminine and refined. The Tsar said, ‘Were your parents very worried about you the other night?’

  I might truthfully have replied that they were very worried but it was always more romantic to be the neglected child.

  ‘No, they were out drinking with friends. They never seem to notice whether I’m there or not.’

  In another situation I would have said my parents had cried and phoned the police in their worry, and even that would have sounded a lie, so long ago had Harriet and I forgotten how to tell the truth. The clock on the wall of the building opposite chimed the hour. The Tsar consulted his watch for accuracy and put his hand on the edge of the table in preparation to rise.

  ‘Tsar.’ I had to speak very quietly in case Harriet overheard. ‘Tsar, will you be going to the woods tonight?’

  He looked at me startled, the hand braced against the table ed
ge relaxed slowly, his body leaned forward once more over the coffee cups. Quick, quick, I thought, before Harriet stops talking, say something, Mr Biggs. His eyes narrowed suddenly as I watched him, his expression was almost of distaste. I blinked rapidly and moved my lips to change my own expression. How often had Harriet recoiled from me, telling me I was ugly, that I must modify and govern the muscles of my face. It was not that my feelings illuminated and transformed me, as Harriet became transformed in diabolical anger or joy, it was more a dreadful eagerness and vulnerability that made my face like an open wound, with all the nerves exposed and raw.

  Weakly the Tsar said, ‘I expect so …’ The little boy swallowed nervously, blinking back the tears of self-pity, red eyelids fluttering.

  ‘Not in the road though. Behind the church.’

  He spoke very quickly, as if Mrs Biggs might be within earshot. The hand pushed against the table, this time with decision, and he rose to his feet. Mr Hind regretfully removed his hand from Harriet’s leg and stood beside him.

  When they had gone Harriet sat well back in her chair and smiled warmly at me. I wanted to tell her at once about my arrangement with the Tsar, but I knew she wanted to be quiet. The man in overalls pushed his plate away noisily and stretched himself, lifting his cap for a moment to ease his hot forehead. Harriet said, ‘Mrs Biggs is going away next week for two days, and Mr Hind is coming to keep the Tsar company.’

  ‘Oh.’

  How clever Harriet was to find out something so important from a stranger. All the satisfaction I had felt at my mumbled request to the Tsar dissolved away, and left me humble.

  ‘How clever you are, Harriet. How did you ask him?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ She looked at me in surprise. ‘He told me himself. I just led the conversation along certain lines and he told me all I wanted to know. Mrs Biggs leaves early Tuesday morning and Mr Hind and the Tsar will be alone till Thursday.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Mr Hind suggested we might call round Tuesday evening and drink coffee.’

  Even Harriet was impressed by this. Drinking coffee was part of a way of life alien to us; it went with concert and theatre going, and people who played bridge of an evening. Seeing a man on the train in the summer, wearing a neat little suit of small check and shoes of honey-coloured suede, one could say with contempt that he drank coffee after his meal. But oh the stylish little panel in the back of his jacket, that flared out like a skirt frill as he alighted on the platform. Anyone who called in the evening to the homes we knew wore gun-metal trousers and green jackets, and at nine o’clock they were given tea and fancy cakes. They were always invited, never unexpected. People who arrived unheralded were rare indeed and Harriet’s mother, had such an occasion arisen, would have talked about it for days with a mixture of pride and bravado. ‘No,’ she would say, ‘we didn’t expect them, they just dropped in. Strange, wasn’t it?’ And a small baffled smile of pleasure would gently curve her mouth.

  We both sat silent, imagining the scene at the house of, the Tsar, drinking coffee out of thin white cups, locked together in the lamplight with the two men: the delicious secrecy of the night, the unfamiliar bitter taste of the dark liquid, the fearful danger, footsteps coming up the path, the Tsar crumpling paper-pale against the window as Mrs Biggs returned before time and fitted her key in the locked door. It was a lovely fearful thing to imagine, and we kept the image of it all the way to the station.

  On the train I told Harriet casually that I had asked the Tsar to meet me in the woods behind the church, but she said nothing, merely nodding her head and staring out at the flying hedges and fields.

  In the evening I almost hoped my mother would tell me I ought to stay indoors, but when I put my coat on in the back kitchen she smiled and told me merely to be in before it grew dark. So I had to go out. I felt excited as I turned the bend of the road and saw the church, remembering the broken window and the helplessness of the Tsar. I climbed the low wall demurely in case he was watching me, and stood among the cold ivy with thoughtful face. Everything seemed damp and sallow, the horizon was flushed green, so that there was no longer a division between earth and sky. The whole world looked sickly and weak; tombstones, slate church and pebbled path tinged with a green unhealthy light. It was as if the churchyard had been modelled with wax and placed under an enormous dome of glass, causing tiny particles of moisture to ooze and dribble along its inner surface. I could not move, so heavy had my limbs become; if I raised my foot only a little it might grow slack and slide away from me. All the time I kept the thoughtful sad look on my face in case the Tsar should see me. A small wind bustled along the pines and crept over the grass. The leaves of ivy trembled against my legs and my hair swayed and hung over my face, freeing me. I walked over the grass and the Tsar and the Canon came out suddenly and stood in the porch talking together. The Canon moved an arm up and down constantly, like a broken wing on a black crow, and the Tsar stared out into the graveyard and nodded his head. I was quite near them if I measured nearness by the relation of my body to the porch, but they looked tiny and distant, creatures under a microscope. The Canon’s bulk seemed curiously whittled down and the Tsar stood a motionless yellow doll, with limp head and face of wax. I must not imagine things, I told myself. I must not imagine things. Even if my nose and ears seemed filled with cottonwool and I was moving in and out, out and in like a child’s fist, I must not imagine things. A foolish smile formed on my face for the benefit of the two men.

  ‘Why should anyone do that, Mr Biggs, do you think? Such a big expensive pane of glass.’

  The Canon’s voice seemed full of tears. He lisped his vowels firmly and loudly and pointed with showmanship at the piece of hardboard that had been wedged into the aperture, a blind eye among healthy ones. The Tsar hung his head and swung his hat between his fingers.

  ‘Who did it?’ I asked bravely, gazing at the Canon’s petulant face and the brown eyes so filled with love. It was his eyes first and then his voice that Harriet said made you know he was senile. He shook his head ponderously from side to side, admitting, ‘We do not know, we do not know.’

  I could not bear the gaze of those luminous eyes, the tiny flecks of yellow light that pitted the brownness. I looked down at my feet in embarrassment and saw against my shoe a piece of glass stained dull red.

  ‘May I keep it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  A mandarin smile narrowed his eyes, and a network of wrinkles spread out joyously across his face as the heavy mouth thinned to a line of pure sweetness. It was a terrible smile. Harriet had said he was like the witch in Hansel and Gretel who had a house made of sweets and candy, only instead of a house it was he himself who was made of sugar.

  ‘If we broke a piece off him,’ she said, ‘even a bit of his little finger, it would be sweet through and through.’

  And now when he smiled I felt against my tongue a fearful cloying stickiness, as if I had bitten his fingers.

  ‘Thank you.’

  I stood there uncertainly, holding the fragment of glass in my palm. The Canon wished me good night with beautiful courtesy and the Tsar smiled gravely as he was led away. I watched them go through the gap in the fence into the Canon’s garden and along the path to the vicarage. The Tsar did not even signal with his hand behind the Canon’s back, he Just swayed delicately towards the house and turned the corner, leaving me in the porch.

  He would make extravagant gestures with his hands, bring the quick tears to his eyes, and not once remember me. But I wanted him to talk to me tonight, I wanted to wait breathlessly and painfully for him to kiss me, I wanted to tell Harriet how powerfully I had questioned him. I willed him with all my strength to come back, but moments passed and I was plump and foolish in the darkening porch. Appalled, I walked round to the other side of the church and sat with my back to the fence, hunching up my knees about my face. Each time I looked up and thought, Now surely he must come, the yard was deserted. Once I heard a rustling in the woods behind me and looked h
alf fearfully over my shoulder expecting him, but all was still, ‘Keine mensch, my love,’ I whispered deeply into my folded arms and smiled knowingly to myself. I felt such an ache, as if I was yawning deep inside my chest, and when the tears came I sat astonished because I did not feel unhappy. I’m just emotional, I told myself between sobs, and buried my face in my arms. If he came now he would grow pale and very gentle with me, he would … but I did not know what he would do. Then I remembered Mrs Biggs on the couch and the darkened room, the death’s head against the leather back, and I shut my eyes so tight that the tears stopped abruptly.

  ‘I’m going home,’ I said loudly, ‘I’m going home.’

  I had to sit a long while in the field at the bottom of the hill for my face to become less swollen. And I really had not felt so very unhappy.

  12

  Harriet arranged that we should go separately on Timothy Street. She was to walk an elaborate detour round the village and approach the house over the fields. I was to come by the usual route and meet her at the house of the Tsar. On no account were we to enter the door together; singly we might go unrecognised and if one of us was caught then the other would be safe. Harriet was to arrive ten minutes ahead of me and leave the high gate open. If the gate was shut I was to walk past and walk straight home. ‘Don’t turn round,’ she warned me as if afraid Mrs Biggs would turn me into a pillar of salt. ‘I promise,’ I said.

  ‘And don’t you dare say your mother wouldn’t let you out. If you don’t turn up I won’t speak to you ever.’