Harriet Said

by Beryl Bainbridge

  My mother was busy making a dress for Frances when I left. I kissed her cheek, avoiding the row of pins caught between her lips. The high gate was open but I walked on, turning back at the end of the road and approaching it as a runner might a difficult hurdle, very fast and not looking to right or left. I rang the bell firmly, patted my hair, smooth, rubbed my hand roughly across my mouth to make it red, performing these actions with feverish haste so as not to be caught when the door opened.

  It was Harriet who let me in, face flushed, her plaits loose and the colourless hair hanging about her ears.

  ‘Yes, it’s her,’ she called into the house and whispered quickly to me, ‘don’t refuse a drink but sip it slowly.’ Harriet shut the front door behind us. I stood there wondering why she thought I might refuse the coffee and why I should only sip it. Perhaps there was not enough to go round. There was a grandfather clock in an alcove; it shivered and jangled its brass weights as we trod past.

  It was not the dreaded front-room, it was a smaller one at the rear of the house overlooking the garden and the fields beyond. The relief at not having to sit on the blue leather couch was overwhelming. Mr Hind sat on the arm of a chair, swinging his muscular leg; the Tsar stood with shrivelled face, smiling shakily.

  ‘Well, well, come on in, dear,’ he said loudly.

  Mr Hind continued to balance on the arm of the chair, watching his brown shoe as it rose and fell. He wore a blue striped suit and a waistcoat of brown felt with a watch chain across it. They were awfully like our fathers, both of them.

  ‘Well, well,’ echoed Harriet, placing her hands childishly behind her back, staring unblinkingly at the Tsar.

  They were both very nervous; we had thrived and matured on such situations and had the advantage.

  ‘Oh Harriet,’ I cried, ‘look, a piano!’

  I sat down, perched on a velvet-topped stool, placing my hands on the keys. The only tune I knew was ‘The Fairy Wedding Waltz’ and I played one bar.

  ‘Do go on,’ said Mr Hind.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly,’ I said truthfully. ‘I’m not a bit musical.’

  Harriet laughed, an easy relaxed sound of amusement, and Mr Hind coughed.

  The Tsar poured a drink out of a decanter and came across the room to me, holding his glass like a flower. He sat on the stool beside me and swirled the mixture in the bowl of the glass, looking over his shoulder at Harriet and Mr Hind. I folded my hands together and stared down at the keyboard. The Tsar leaned his elbow carefully on the notes, so carefully there was no sound at all, and crossed his legs. I had only to turn sideways a little and we would face each other. Instead I sat apparently lost in thought, slack hands cupped in my lap.

  ‘Do you think you ought not to have come?’ he asked quietly, shading his eyes with his hand, arching his palm about his brow as if to shut out a too bright light.

  ‘Oh, no, it’s just, it’s just …’

  ‘Well, what?’ He paused kindly, anxious to help me. Try as I might I could not be sincere, I could not begin to be truthful.

  ‘It seems wrong to be here in your house, when she is away. She would suffer so if she knew.’

  The skin puckered round his shadowed eyes. He massaged his forehead, kneading it unhappily, mouth drawn down in misery.

  ‘She won’t know, God willing.’

  God willing was like when my father at Christmas picked up his glass of port and raised it high, saying good-humouredly, ‘To absent and sea-faring friends!’ There were no absent and sea-faring friends, just as the Tsar knew there was no God willing to keep our visit from Mrs Biggs. Still, it had to be said, to preserve the formalities.

  ‘Why have you come?’

  The question was so sudden and so unlike him that for a moment I was almost shocked into telling the truth.

  ‘I wanted to see what it would be like. I mean I only know you on the shore and in the lane. It’s … it’s interesting to see where people live.’

  The mouth twitched uncontrollably. The word ‘interesting’ had hurt him.

  ‘I see.’

  He did not see, but it was again a game and the rule was not to enlighten him; Harriet would appreciate that later when I retold the conversation. I did not want him to be hurt, though.

  ‘I mean I like seeing you and I wanted to know how you looked inside a house.’

  Mr Hind rose to his feet energetically and went to the table and its decanter. Harriet said gaily, ‘Only a very little one, honest.’

  The word ‘honest’, recalling school, seemed out of place in the room. I imagined her arm lifted in mock reproach, her bright eyes smiling at Mr Hind. The Tsar looked at her between his fingers and away again, and now I knew her arm had dropped into her lap, and the bold eyes no longer laughing were staring at him curiously. Mr Hind stood in front of the Tsar.

  ‘You haven’t offered the young lady a drink yet.’

  He shook a finger roguishly at the man on the stool and asked me, ‘What will it be, my dear? Sherry or a little whisky?’

  Such a confiding smile, the moist mouth very red and lively beneath the thick moustache.

  ‘Whisky, I think.’

  I turned on the stool, away from the Tsar and towards Harriet, but she sipped at her drink demurely and would not look up.

  ‘Right you are.’

  Mr Hind turned his muscular back to me and stooped over the decanter. The Tsar sat heavily and in silence, one hand almost obscuring his face. The blurred edge of his jaw and the fold of skin above his collar seemed to express reproach.

  ‘Is whisky all right?’ I asked, sounding timid.

  ‘Whisky’s very much all right.’ Mr Hind stood on the carpet, swaying from the waist, offering me the small glass half-filled with brown liquid. I had a confused image of him sharing a room at night with the Tsar, unbuttoning his city shirt to expose his virile chest, and the Tsar turning his back to thrust withered white arms into his pyjama jacket.

  Mr Hind returned to Harriet.

  I sipped experimentally at the drink I held, and shuddered at the bitter taste. I had tasted it before, when I had been ill in bed with a chill, and once when I had a period pain. It did not seem possible that one drank it for enjoyment.

  ‘It’s very warm once it’s inside,’ I told the Tsar.

  ‘Do your parents go out drinking a lot?’ He looked down at his glass.

  ‘Not all that often. It’s a relaxation.’

  ‘Just as well they do, eh?’ He gave me a gentle smile and rubbed at his cheek. ‘You wouldn’t be allowed out so often.’

  ‘They don’t bother about me. I’ve always run wild, that’s why I was sent away to school.’ I felt very wronged suddenly. ‘They don’t understand me.’

  I realised at once I had said a silly thing; it was such an obvious remark. Why, if the Tsar understood the game he had even been waiting for me to say it.

  The Tsar gazed at Harriet and Mr Hind in the far corner under the window, the light fading now in the garden outside, and said:

  ‘When you are young you think the tragedy of life is not being understood—not having the chances or the right books to read. When you are a few years wiser you know that nothing is so sad as the injustices of old age.’

  ‘But you’re not old, Tsar, not nearly old.’

  I knew what he meant. I knew that my saying he was not old would make him sure I had misunderstood, but perversely I did not care.

  ‘Why, you’re quite young you know.’

  ‘I was twenty-six when I married.’ His eyes grew red-rimmed as if he was about to cry. ‘I did not want to marry, I just drifted into it. I don’t really regret it.’ He sounded surprised, his eyes opened wider.

  I fidgeted on the stool, rubbing my hands along the soft velvet, enjoying the soft touch of my frizzed hair as it fell against my cheeks when I hung my head. I could not possibly this evening make him say he loved me, even if Harriet and Mr Hind left us alone. He was not in the mood; he was all sorrow for himself and surprise that he did not reg
ret marrying Mrs Biggs. He oozed astonishment and self-pity; a kind word would stretch him sobbing across the piano in a wild welter of discordant notes. Mrs Biggs had said he was weak, that a little more self control would help. Doubtless she was right; she might be the one who was the more sinned against.

  ‘Why did you marry if you did not really want to marry?’

  There was no answer. Helplessly I felt Harriet’s eyes on my back, ears strained to catch the conversation. I forgot she had told me to sip at the drink; I shut my eyes and swallowed quickly, and placed the empty glass on the piano top.

  The room was very warm, I was aware of a wetness on my palms. Harriet began to laugh. It was her exhibitionist laugh and very realistic. I looked over my shoulder and saw Mr Hind with his hand on her hair, and Harriet, half hidden by him and the breadth of his shoulders, leaning back in the chair with her head right back and her mouth wide open. Mr Hind any moment was meant to kiss the open mouth to stop her laughing, and even as I watched his head bent suddenly and Harriet became quiet. I turned away and looked at my miserable Tsar.

  The Tsar uncovered his eyes and glanced quickly at the empty glass. He frowned at it.

  ‘I forgot I had to sip at it,’ I said. ‘Will I be drunk now?’

  ‘You know how we got this house?’ He sounded angry with me, as if I had prompted the question. I wondered if he were drunk, and if he was would it be easier to make him kiss me.

  ‘No, how?’

  ‘She won it in a raffle. Yes, she did; that’s how we got it.’

  ‘Really.’ For all the world I sounded like Harriet’s mother indulging in a slightly risky conversation and handling it in a ladylike way.

  ‘Someone had a bazaar down at the church … before the Canon’s time. They had tickets for this house, and she bought one. That’s why we got married, because she won the raffle. Seemed the only sensible thing to do.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ Supposing they had won a ship, not a house, would he have gone to sea? Or a horse … he might have been a jockey.

  ‘You could have sold the house.’

  ‘Oh no, you had to live in it or forfeit it. You had to play fair.’ He was quite right, I could see that now. You had to play fair.

  Mr Hind and Harriet were opening the door. I sat motionless on the piano stool, unable to call for help. ‘Harriet,’ I might have said loudly, ‘Harriet, it’s getting out of hand. He’s crying.’ But the door shut and we were alone.

  The Tsar appeared not to notice. He stood up and went to the decanter to fill his glass.

  ‘It’s funny you know, how things happen …’ He swung round to stare at me, one hand holding the decanter by the neck. ‘Just a little ticket … a little ticket and you get married and settle down.’

  The whisky poured steadily into his glass; he stood, one leg bent at the knee, his eyes watching, his hand pouring. I hoped he would not realise how like a bad poem he sounded. Harriet would say it was because most people had unoriginal minds, but I could not think just then how else he could paraphrase his existence.

  Darkness settled along the neglected garden; leaves rustled frantically in a sudden small wind.

  ‘What number was the ticket?’

  Something so important must remain for ever engraved upon the memory.

  ‘The number?’ He became irritated. ‘Lord, how would I know. Thirteen most likely.’

  He sat down beside me on the piano stool. His elbow this time struck with elation on the notes, making ugly musical sounds. ‘All I know is, she won the raffle.’

  If he was not drunk he was being very clever. Perhaps he thought it would be easier to kiss me if I thought he was drunk. I wondered what Harriet was doing to Mr Hind. Now was the time to start saying the Lord’s Prayer; I had waited long enough. If he did not kiss me before Thine is the Kingdom, he would not kiss me tonight.

  The Tsar crossed one thin leg over the other, and drank a little of the whisky.

  Our Father which art in heaven …

  ‘I go into her room now and then, once in perhaps six months. Usually it’s after a night out with Douglas Hind. She never says a word.’

  But what about the evening on the couch. He wasn’t telling the truth. Hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come …

  ‘Other times she tries to sit on my knee … It’s dreadful, she’s too heavy. I get cramp. Wouldn’t do to let her know though.’

  Thy will be done, as it is in Heaven. That was wrong surely.

  ‘Sometimes she comes into my room in a blue nightdress she had when we first got married. I lie there with my eyes shut, praying she’ll go away.’

  It was horrible. I could not listen to such words. Harriet must be wrong. He was far too old, far too sad to be helped or turned into an experience. He put a hand on my shoulder, and I leant sideways under his weight. He placed his glass carefully on the piano top, shut his eyes, and laid his forehead against my cheek.

  ‘I should like,’ he said formally, ‘to kiss you, my dear.’ But he just remained folded against me, almost as if he slept. Please, please, I thought, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, bring it to an end. Two tears rolled off his cheeks and down my face. He smelled like an invalid who had been too long out of the sun. He sat back blindly on the stool, took me by the shoulders as if to steady a moving target, and brought his tear-stained face closer.

  Dryness on my lips, a sour smell of drink, his knee with its too sharp bone pressing into my leg; such clumsiness in his whole gesture. I felt so weary I wanted to lean back and pretend to be ill. It was terrible to be kissed by him. I closed my eyes and thought what I should say when he had finished. I must look long and wonderingly at him and say presently, ‘You make me feel funny.’ He did not make me feel funny, not as the Italian had when he called me a Dirty Little Angel, but I would have to say so, otherwise he would feel hurt. Besides I did not know what else to say. All the time I kept wondering why I had felt I loved him, why I had loved him on the shore and when I was with Harriet, and why I did not love him now when he kissed me. His mouth relaxed its pressure, a flat little sound of air escaped as his face drew away from mine. I had no time to look long and wonderingly at him, no time to say anything; he pushed at me fiercely so that I slipped and lay along the stool, and all the time he kept his eyes closed.

  ‘Please don’t,’ I said politely. ‘It’s awfully uncomfortable.’

  On his knees beside the stool the Tsar shuffled to hold my hands in his. He laid his head on my hip and said:

  ‘You’re so young. You’re so young. I love you. I love you.’

  I looked at the chair by the fireplace, and the framed picture on the wall above it, memorising positions so nothing should be lost when I told Harriet. I did not dare smile though, in case he opened his eyes.

  I touched the thin skull with my hand, and stroked the hair to soothe him, remembering as I did so the evening by the tadpole ponds when I dreamed of this moment. Tears ran down his face, making him ridiculous. I could not forget my conventional upbringing, my instilled belief that it was not right for a man to cry. His hands moved, they spread out over my knee and he bent his head and cried through his fingers. I pushed at his wrists with all my strength, and he looked up quickly and stared in astonishment, a look of bewilderment in the distressed eyes, as if he could not believe I was unwilling to comfort him. Then with cunning he pressed his face against my leg and held on to me, the tears spilling on to my skin.

  The room was almost dark, the house quite silent; Harriet and Mr Hind were lost somewhere in the upstairs rooms.

  ‘Please don’t,’ I whispered. ‘Please don’t, Mr Biggs.’

  Twilight flutterings, peevish struggling; fingers like goldfish squirmed and flickered to be free. Back and forth in a dim aquarium the Tsar and I threshed with our hands. He fought desperately to find a reservoir for his grief, and suddenly the strength and the will left me. I lay still and turned my face away from him because I did not want him to see my expression should he look up.

  I knew I could comf
ort him; I could be kind and good and heal him; but I would not. I imagined his sobs must be more from shame and self-pity than from sadness, so I just sat there and stored up the experience inside me.

  I looked down unsmiling at the top of his head, at the soft skin showing beneath the crown of his hair, at the taut neck stretched over my knee. It was happening so differently from the way I had imagined, even if he had said he loved me. He had not demanded that I love him in return, that I should give myself to him. He had not told me that I was not fat but thin and golden. So I would not be kind to him I would not lift a finger to show my sympathy. And then it was he who slipped away from me and lay face downwards on the carpet at my feet. He lay so abjectly, shoulders lifting a little as he wept, that I stood up in embarrassment, not knowing what to do. I touched him gently with the toe of my shoe, and he moved convulsively and clutched at my foot with his hands. And while I stood there helplessly, the Tsar with my foot in his two hands, and his head buried in the carpet, the light was switched on, and I heard Harriet laugh. She stood in the doorway, arms folded over her chest, and laughed her exhibitionist laugh. She did not look at me, but kept her eyes fixed on the Tsar, to punish him. He had looked up into the light and stared at her in the doorway. I was glad she did not point at the door and tell me to go home and not turn round. I looked curiously at the Tsar. He lay quite still, face of grief yellow in the harsh light, small head straining upward. I did not understand why Harriet was laughing. The Tsar looked comical enough, but the plan after all was to make him fall in love with me.

  After this last indignity he would never wish to see me again. Mr Hind, furry mouth apart in surprise, pulled at Harriet’s arm worriedly.

  ‘Steady on,’ he said, not looking at the Tsar. He pulled more harshly at her, dragging her backwards into the dark hall, and closed the door. Slowly the Tsar bent his head and got to his knees. He got up on to his feet neatly and turned to the window, staring thoughtfully out into the garden. Harriet’s voice rose loudly in anger beyond the door; Mr Hind was silent, speechless before her unaccountable rage.