Harriet Said

by Beryl Bainbridge

  Perjer got more wood from a pile in the corner of the hut, and removing the black kettle from the embers and placing it with a neat house-proud precision on a rough shelf above the door, he returned and kicked the wood into place and rubbed his hands together.

  The Tsar said, ‘It’s not too warm is it?’ His eyes took in the worn black suit. ‘I expect that’s wearing a bit thin now.’

  It sounded personal and in my ignorance I feared Perjer would be offended.

  ‘I wore it on my wedding day,’ said the Tsar.

  He looked at me and away again. Perjer squatted by the dog; placing his palms on his knees, he looked down contemplatively at the black cloth across his breast.

  ‘We all come to it,’ he said, as if comforting a child.

  Perjer cradled the dog’s paw in his. ‘I sat on the wall outside and wished you luck. The Canon tried to get rid of me.’

  ‘Yes, so he did.’

  The two men smiled at the recollection and gazed into the fire.

  Perjer had been there that day too. Mrs Biggs in her bridal gown, the Canon dropping crumbs from his baby mouth. There on the floor of the hut sat Perjer in the wedding suit the Tsar had worn thirty years ago.

  ‘It was a grand day for it,’ said Perjer.

  Going home I was silent. The Tsar told me that Perjer was the son of a doctor in London. ‘He started out to be a lawyer but he never took his finals. Upset the old man. No staying power at all … he just wasn’t interested. He said he was born tired.’

  ‘Lazy sod.’

  ‘Quite.’

  The lamps were lit in the lane. The windows in the church shone gold; the Canon’s sister whom nobody loved was playing the organ. Like the broken window I too had been violated. As Perjer had said this evening … we all come to it in the end.

  15

  There were but two weeks left of the holidays. As before at school I had counted the days to the end of term, willing the hours to pass quicker, so now I waited for summer to finish. Shadows of fatigue darkened my face though I went to bed early and slept late each morning. My mother said twice I looked poorly and hoped I was not going to be ill.

  I tried to talk to Harriet but there was a barrier between us. She did not mention the diary and we were not allowed out at night. It would have been nice to mention casually that I had been inside Perjer’s hut, that he was the son of a doctor in London. And but for Harriet’s mother it could have ended then, it need not have gone further.

  Harriet was sitting at the kitchen table writing her nature diary. The little woman and I sat twined in cosy intimacy together winding wool.

  She said, ‘I met Mrs Biggs this morning on her way to the station. Her sister’s child has been taken to hospital.’

  She looked up, suddenly aware of whom she spoke. I kept my arms held wide and looked at the wool strung across them as if they were strands of gold. Harriet said nothing. I let the silence develop. Then I said, ‘What a shame,’ and, moving my arms from side to side, ‘Why don’t they invent a machine to do all this?’

  Relieved, the little woman continued winding her ball of wool. The small head bent low was vulnerable. For no reason I thought how easy it would be to crush the skull beneath the soft hair. All the time I was really thinking of Mrs Biggs, looking at the little woman’s feet half expecting to see the square brown sandals planted firmly on the grey carpet. I knew Harriet was watching me and I felt afraid. She said in a bright exultant voice:

  ‘What a bit of luck! I say, little woman, how do you spell fauna?’ It was our old strategy, evolved to cheat the adults at their own game. The first sentence was for me, the second a blind to cover the real message. I waited. When the Little Woman had spelt the word, Harriet said, ‘I never expected that … Thank you.’

  ‘We must go there as soon as possible … I need another leaf for my collection.’

  If she had said, ‘scalp’ it would have been more appropriate.

  ‘No, no we can’t.’ I heard my voice incredulously.

  Surprised, the Little Woman stared at me, a frown puckering her forehead. Harriet pushed her chair back noisily behind me and came over to her mother.

  ‘Do you like my drawing?’

  She sat on the arm of the chair and put an arm round her mother’s shoulders. She looked at me as she said, ‘It’s a little uncontrolled, isn’t it?’

  Her mother said delightedly, ‘It’s a lovely drawing, darling … and your writing is so much better.’

  I sat holding the wool in my hands and looked down at the floor. ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘but this is the last time.’

  I did not mind if her mother was puzzled, it was all one now. ‘Then that’s settled. We’ll go tomorrow.’

  Harriet bent and kissed her mother on the cheek with fondness. She stood up yawning with satisfaction, stretching her arms high above her head, her eyes closed against her thoughts.

  As before, we met in the lane; but this time nothing was said about arriving separately at the house of the Tsar. Nor did we pause in Timothy Street, for fear people should see which way we went. It was dark when we opened the high gate. It was a pitifully short path to the front door and the holly bush beside the porch. Some of the light from the lamp in the street spilled through the hedge and lay on the dark lawn.

  I told myself, as I lifted the heavy knocker to summon the Tsar, that I should remember all my life the smell of the paint that had blistered in the sun, the sound of Harriet breathing in the blackness, the dry rustle of the coarse hair-mat beneath our feet, as if we stood on fallen leaves.

  The Tsar stood as if at the end of a long tunnel, a small figure with hands outstretched.

  ‘Well, invite us in,’ said Harriet.

  The face of the Tsar was old. He smiled hectically, waggling a reproving finger.

  ‘Naughty, naughty. You shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘Well, we have,’ she said.

  ‘I could say it’s a great pleasure, a deep pleasure. I could indeed say that.’ He swayed a little on his feet.

  Harriet fell silent. She had not anticipated that he would be drunk. For myself our meeting was mist bound after a lapse of eternity.

  Last holidays I had seen Papa, the husband of Dodie, after a period of several months. He was so old all at once, standing in his garden, tottering over the lawn when I called his name. ‘Papa,’ I had said, ‘it’s me, don’t you remember?’

  Behind the hedge he peered at me, holding on to his walking cane, the breeze moving his white hair. A handsome face, still, thick waves of hair on his temples. A long while ago we had been the best of friends—Harriet and Dodie and Papa and I—sharing little jokes, sitting in his garden waiting for the strawberries to ripen, the plums to fall.

  So gallant, Papa, in his blazer and boater among the flowers. He stood there, ill and almost blind, and I too sure facing him, watching his groping expression in the sunlight as he fought to thrust aside the years’ corrosion and recognise my voice, eyes clouded like milk spilt.

  Looking at the Tsar I felt now that he, unlike Papa, was thrusting life away from him with all his power, pushing backward all that might yet keep him nearly young. I said quickly, ‘We came to say good-bye. We go back to school at the end of the week, there’s no more time.’

  ‘Ah now, that’s a blow.’

  The Tsar began to laugh immoderately. He shrugged his shoulders in a spasm of mirth and tapped the grandfather clock on its glass middle.

  ‘No more time left,’ he recited lovingly, and a deep boom of protest came from the clock as he leaned heavily against it. Harriet opened the door into the front-room.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said and walked in. Beyond the doorway I could see the sofa glimpsed through the window an age ago. As we stood in the hall with the shrivelled Tsar, it assumed its proper importance, no longer an altar of sacrifice on which he had lain, but a comfortable piece of furniture, its design repeated and echoed in a hundred other rooms in a hundred other houses. I followed Harriet and sat deliberatel
y on the sofa. Harriet began to enjoy herself. She hugged her knees with enjoyment so that the two lank ropes of her hair touched gently the faded carpet.

  ‘Hark at him,’ she said with mock severity as the Tsar struck at the grandfather clock in the hall. She rolled her eyes comically as the Tsar half sang, half shouted, ‘Ding-Dong, Ding-Dong.’

  ‘He’s mad drunk, that’s what he is,’ I whispered. ‘Stark raving drunk.’

  I leaned backwards on the sofa to see the Tsar laboriously winding the aged clock.

  ‘Trying to make more time,’ he shouted, and broke into laughter. We laughed too, though it was sad what he said. He came sideways into the room and shut the door with elegance, pivoting round on his toes to face us with one hand raised in blessing.

  ‘So be it,’ he said gently to Harriet and walked to the small table with the bottles stacked on it.

  ‘Is the child very ill?’ asked Harriet sitting bolt upright on one of the chairs by the hearth.

  ‘The child?… Oh did she say that?’ He poured liquid into a glass and held it up to the light.

  ‘She’s gone for a rest. That’s what she said. She said I was making her ill. That’s what she said.’ His voice lifted the last words as if he was reciting a poem.

  ‘It’s as good as a play,’ said Harriet eyeing him with delight. ‘The stage husband deserted by his wife steadily drinking himself into oblivion. The part’s made for you.’ She curled herself deeper into the massive armchair and looked thoughtful.

  ‘But what are we?’ she asked the Tsar.

  ‘Ah now, that’s more difficult.’ He propped himself against the mantelpiece and pointed the toe of his shoe upwards. ‘Angels of light,’ he said giving Harriet a sly glance, ‘come to show me a way out of it all.’

  Delighted with each other’s wit they laughed together. It became clearer in my mind. What I had known in the hut on the shore had not been false. Harriet, who had schemed and planned the summer long for this, and who finally believed there was not enough time, could not realise she no longer controlled events. Every breath we took spun the wheel faster and faster, and neither she nor I nor God could stop it. Had I believed God would, I might have prayed, but this too Harriet had perhaps foreseen, for how many times over the years had she taught me that God was powerless without innocence?

  Harriet said, ‘This place needs brightening up, Tsar. Let’s rearrange the furniture.’

  She stood and surveyed the room.

  ‘Now this would look much better here.’ She seized the armchair with strong hands and pulled it into the centre of the room. ‘There.’ Head tilted on her thin neck so that the lamplight fell full on to her smooth pale face, she looked at the room. The Tsar stared stupidly at the large armchair in its unfamiliar place.

  ‘It won’t do, you know,’ he said finally, and moved on precise feet to rescue the chair, but Harriet was already moving swiftly about the room like an uneasy whirlwind, dragging the table from its accustomed place under the window, so that it reared out into the already cluttered room.

  The Tsar let go his hold of the isolated chair and tried to push the table into place, but it was too heavy for him and he sprawled breathlessly against it, watching Harriet with disbelief. She, standing on tiptoe, stretched up a violating arm and snatched the statue with its exposed breast from its niche on the sideboard. Holding it aloft she faced him triumphantly.

  ‘This,’ she cried, ‘ought by rights to be on a raised dais so that Mrs Biggs can pray to the vulgar thing.’

  The minute sword brandished in the figure’s hand tilted slightly and cast a huge shadow across the curtains.

  ‘No, no, put it down.’ The Tsar giggled in a weak fashion and placed his hand on his heart. ‘You’ll break it … Take care.’

  He seemed to slip downwards into his neat city clothes, so that they hung on his thin body and fluttered as he moved towards her. ‘Put it down,’ he repeated in a high fluted voice without control. Harriet darted to the mantelpiece and stood the statue directly in the middle. It leered at the room, its red-tipped breast pointing upwards, its sword rakishly spearing the blue lupins that lolled in their cream vase.

  ‘That’s better,’ she cried. ‘Now Mrs Biggs can get down on her knees to it.’

  I kept my eyes fixed on the Tsar so that I should see the exact moment at which he broke under the strain. His face as he looked at the disordered room was almost hopeful. It was as if by changing the position of the furniture Harriet had minutely struck at his life with Mrs Biggs. Each new arrangement of a familiar object blurred and unfocused the years and moments of their existence together, so that he felt in this new catastrophe that the memory of Mrs Biggs was being edged slowly, little by little, out of the room. He wanted to complete the dismissal. He turned to the Welsh dresser and took down the blue and gold plates one by one from their places. His hands moved so clumsily and so eagerly that one fell from his grasp and dropped to the carpet. It did not break but lay reproachfully face down at his feet. All the time I sat upright on the blue sofa, while Harriet and he moved like birds of prey around the stricken room.

  Harriet found a match and lit the virgin candles in their brass holders on either side of the hearth. She turned off the electric light and, as the wax melted and the wicks burned, the room was nearly beautiful. Mrs Biggs, had she returned, might have been pleased with the improvements. She might have appreciated the soft leaping shadows on the dull cream walls.

  Back and forth in the candlelight the Tsar and Harriet went their destructive way. Now, I told myself, now. Surely she must come back now. And as I said it, the Tsar lifted his foot and kicked at the glass dial of the radio. Harriet, appalled, looked at the wrecked instrument and said slowly, as if returning from a long journey through dangerous places. ‘That was stupid … You shouldn’t have done it.’ The face she turned to me was bewildered.

  ‘Let’s go home now,’ she said, and the childish mouth remained open in fear.

  The Tsar stood in the expensive glass, swaying on his feet.

  ‘Why, why?’ his voice was accusing. ‘You wanted me to do it. You did, didn’t you?’

  Harriet stood motionless, defenceless in the centre of the room, her mouth quivering.

  ‘Oh come now,’ the Tsar spoke to her tenderly, stretching out a hand to her with beguilement, ‘I thought it would be a gesture after your own heart.’ He looked wonderingly round the shadowed room, taking strength from the new unfamiliarity, and said with gaiety, ‘Let’s enjoy ourselves while we can. Let’s all have a cigarette.’

  He patted his pocket hopefully and felt with eager fingers for his case. Harriet said nothing, keeping her eyes fixed on him as one hypnotised by something terrible.

  ‘I’ll have to run out and get some.’

  He showed us his empty cigarette case with despair. ‘Can’t possibly be without a cigarette.’

  He waited as if half expecting Harriet would stop him, and then seeing she only watched him, he moved gladly to the door.

  ‘I won’t be long. Just you sit back and enjoy the décor.’

  We heard him go down the hall and out of the door. His footsteps went softly down the path, the gate creaked as he opened it and left us alone in the house.

  I wondered if the Tsar would ever return in our lifetime. I would have liked to tell Harriet this but her face was so white and mute I left her to her own thoughts. She stood uneasily in the middle of the room not knowing what to do, then because there was nowhere to go sat down on the sofa beside me. In the candlelight the tables and chairs jostled for position; the figure on the mantelshelf flickered and thrust its tiny sword deeper into the flowers. Harriet said, ‘He shouldn’t have done that.’

  She looked fearfully at the broken glass that lapped the carpet.

  ‘It was stupid.’

  I could not agree, so I kept silent.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Her voice was petulant.

  ‘Nothing.’ I enjoyed my calmness, my ability to puzzle Harriet, above
all the knowledge that she was frightened. She sat up and caught hold of my arm fiercely.

  ‘Why are you so calm all of a sudden … tell me?’ She pinched my flesh viciously so that I squirmed. ‘Go on, tell me.’

  ‘Nothing. I just don’t mind any more.’

  Harriet let go of my arm and lay back defeated. The candle nearest the window lurched in its holder and dripped grease on to the carpet, a round globe of wax among the shattered glass. Kindly, I told her: ‘You see, dear, we’ve done what you wanted. We’ve humbled him like you said.’

  Slowly she turned her face to me, the eyes widening, ‘What do you mean?’

  I almost hesitated but there did not seem any reason now why I should not tell her.

  ‘Well, it happened … the other night on the shore. I mean he … he …’ I could not say it.

  ‘He had you?’

  Her voice was weak with incredulity. She watched my mouth for a denial, and seeing none came, flung herself back against the arm of the sofa, looking at me as if she had not known me before. Then as the full realisation struck her: ‘My God, he had you!’

  She stood up and stared wildly round the lunatic room. My mouth twitched in the beginnings of a smile because she embarrassed me. I dug my teeth into my lip in an act of suppression. The phrase she used was comical, it reminded me too much of the sentences we had written with infinite labour in the diary.

  I said, ‘But I thought that’s what you meant me to do. You said we had to bring it to a conclusion. You said so.’