Harriet Said

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘I didn’t say to do that, I never—’

  ‘You said humble him.’

  ‘I never said to do that.’ Her shoulders jerked in a spasm of distress. ‘Why do a thing like that? We’re not ready. You had no right.’

  ‘I don’t know what you are fussing about. It was nothing really. I hardly noticed. Just a bit like going to the dentist. Not even as bad.’

  I thought she was going to hit me. Instead she spun round and ran from the room. I was left sitting on the blue sofa with the candles burning on the walls. I really couldn’t see what she was so angry about. Stifled by a desire to laugh I walked to the door and called her name. I thought for one moment she was not in the house and then in the darkness I heard her whisper, ‘She’s come back … it’s Mrs Biggs.’

  In the night the dull capable footsteps came up the path. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide; my heart beat so loudly I was afraid Mrs Biggs must hear it. I stood beside Harriet behind the door and she pressed against me and clenched my hand reassuringly. I struggled to preserve my independence as Mrs Biggs stood in the porch, battled my will against Harriet’s, and as the key fitted in the lock and the wife of the Tsar leaned her weight against the door, Harriet pushed something into my hand.

  ‘Hit her,’ she said softly, ‘hit her.’

  The door opened inward and I stepped out into the centre of the hall raising my arm high above my head. She was huge and menacing in the porch and I meant to push her down the steps so that Harriet and I might run away. When I hit her she swayed on her feet, unaccountably facing the dark garden, and did not fall. I struck at her again with desperation and boldness because she could not see my face, and when she fell softly away from me and drifted into the darkness like some great leaf, the Tsar was standing in the open gateway looking at me.

  I could not move, I could not lower my arm. Harriet switched the hall light on behind me and I felt the night air sweeping over the plot of grass to cool my face. I wept inside and loved my mother and my father with all my being, but I could not move.

  The Tsar came along the path slowly as if he were very tired. I wanted him to hurry so that I might be released from my inertia and he could tell me that nothing after all was wrong. I hoped Mrs Biggs would stay with her face on the steps till Harriet and I had run home. I could not bear the weight of the stick in my hand and I hoped too that the Tsar would take it from me and put it back in its stand behind the door with Mrs Biggs’s red and green umbrella.

  ‘Go inside,’ the Tsar said. ‘Go inside and don’t come out.’

  I was frightened but I did what he told me. I had done something wrong and he and Mrs Biggs united would talk to me severely. This time for sure Mrs Biggs would come and visit my mother. I was glad they would all be angry with me now because I had felt so strangely vindictive when I struck at Mrs Biggs; I should be punished and purged, could kiss Harriet on the cheek and return to school never more to think of the Tsar and this dreadful summer. Harriet had blown out the candles and put on the electric light, reducing the room to shabby disorder. I was surprised she just stood there and did not rush frantically putting the furniture to rights so that Mrs Biggs would not be further shocked.

  ‘I didn’t hit her very hard, Harriet. I only meant to push her.’

  Harriet said ‘Yes’ absently and rubbed at her cheek.

  ‘What if she has to go to hospital?’ With fear beginning I looked at her for reassurance.

  ‘She won’t.’

  The front door closed loudly and the Tsar came into the room. He stood in the doorway looking at the glass on the carpet and felt in his pocket for cigarettes. He hunched his shoulders and thrust his jaw forward so that I could see the faint perspiration on his face when the match flared up. The smoke from his cigarette wreathed his head familiarly, clouding the sparse hair. Harriet at the mantelshelf raised her hand and brushed the lupins with her palm, shaking the loaded stems gently. ‘She’s dead,’ said the Tsar.

  Someone was crying, sobbing as if their heart would break, making ugly sounds in the otherwise silent room. My face puckered up, though inside I was calm. My father was saying I had done it now, I had really done it this time, and I was arguing with him rationally, telling him that Mr Biggs did rude things to me in the sandhills, that it was not my fault, I had been corrupted. More sinned against than sinning. I was shouting but he would not listen and Mrs Biggs was straddling over me, shaking me furiously in giant hands, stamping on my feet with her great sandals and I was telling her to get off, get off me you big fat sow, but I could not get my breath and my tongue would not shape the words. Then she shook me so violently the room slid headlong past me and receded. Harriet was pushing the small of my back with a rough hand, forcing my head between my knees and when I sat up I was on the blue sofa. The Tsar was not in the room. There was a stale smell of sickness all over me; my hair was sticky.

  I could not make out what Harriet was telling me. Something about time and the fact that the Tsar had got his cigarettes from the slot machine at the station.

  ‘Nobody saw him at the station; he says it was completely deserted.’ She spoke urgently into my ear, her warm breath fanning my cheek. ‘And nobody saw him in the street either, he’s sure of it.’

  In just a few days I could go back to school. In just a few days. Today my father would have bought the train ticket. It would be lying on the hall table when I went in. I held on to the thought of the train ticket while Harriet’s voice went on and on …

  ‘Nobody saw us come here. We’ll go out through the back garden and along the ditch. We’ll come quickly up the side lane into the street again and I will scream. Then we will run all the way to my house and when they ask us what is wrong we’ll say we saw the Tsar hit Mrs Biggs.’

  She leant over me powerfully and took me by the shoulders. ‘We’ll say we saw the Tsar hit Mrs Biggs … do you hear?’

  I did love Harriet then. She was so wise, so good, so sweetly clever and able to cope with the situation. I would say we saw Mrs Biggs fall down the steps, and the Tsar behind her with a stick in his hand.

  ‘Yes, Harriet, I’ll say that.’

  Now that Mrs Biggs was truly dead I would do whatever Harriet wanted. I would never doubt her again but acknowledge she was more beautiful than me.

  She stood up and looked quickly at the room. She searched in the pocket of her dress for her handkerchief and began to wipe the mantelpiece. The Tsar came into the room and closed the door behind him. He watched Harriet thoughtfully for a moment and then said:

  ‘What are you doing?’

  I was glad he asked her that because I wanted to know too.

  ‘There’ll be fingerprints,’ said Harriet, ‘and we don’t want that. If we’re thorough no one will guess we’ve been here.’

  She took down the statue from above the fireplace and wiped it carefully.

  ‘I see.’

  There was a long silence while Harriet finished what she had to do. She even rubbed the door knob and the edge of the table.

  ‘Now we’ll go,’ she said with authority. She eyed him carefully to see if he was equal to the situation, and having satisfied herself, continued:

  ‘You must wait at least an hour for us to get home and tell our story.’

  I waited fearfully for the Tsar to ask what our story was, but he stood by the window and said nothing.

  ‘Then you must phone the police and tell them Mrs Biggs is dead. Do you understand?’

  The old man nodded his head and fingered the material of the curtain.

  ‘It’s important you wait that hour. You do see that, don’t you?’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Good.’ She looked at me and made a slight upward gesture with her hand. I stood up obediently and followed her out of the room.

  She closed the door behind me and leaned against it, her eyes searching the hall. ‘The stick,’ she said, but not to me.

  It was in its stand along with the red umbrella with green stripes. She lifte
d it out carefully and wiped at it with the grey lining of her coat.

  Above the clock was a shelf with a blue plate. There was one like it at home. Outside in the porch Mrs Biggs slept on. The clock ticked on.

  Then we walked out of the back door into the garden.

  A Biography of Dame Beryl Bainbridge

  Dame Beryl Bainbridge is regarded as one of the greatest and most prolific British novelists of her generation. Consistently praised by critics, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize five times, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the W. H. Smith Literary Award, and twice won the Whitbread Award for Novel of the Year.

  Bainbridge was born in Liverpool in 1932 to Richard Bainbridge and Winifred, née Baines. Her father acquired a respectable income as a salesman but went bankrupt as a result of the 1929 stock market crash. Later in life, she reflected on her turbulent childhood through her writing as a cathartic release. She often said she wrote to make sense of her own childhood.

  Despite financial pressures, the Bainbridges sent their children to fee-paying schools. Beryl attended the Merchant Taylors’ girls’ school, and had lessons in German, elocution, music, and tap-dancing. At the age of fourteen, she was expelled, cited as a “corrupting moral influence” after her mother found a dirty limerick among her school things. She then attended the Cone-Ripman School at Tring, Hertfordshire, but left at age sixteen, never earning any formal educational degrees.

  She went on to work as an assistant stage manager at the Playhouse Theatre in Liverpool, which would become the basis for one of her Booker-nominated novels, An Awfully Big Adventure, a disturbing story about a teenage girl working on a production of Peter Pan. She successfully worked as an actress both before and after her time at the playhouse. As a child, she acted in BBC Radio’s Children’s Hour, and before the birth of her first child, she appeared on the soap opera Coronation Street on Granada Television.

  While at the playhouse, Bainbridge met Austin Davies, an artist and set painter. They married in 1954 and had two children together, Aaron and Jojo. They divorced in 1959, and she then moved to London. There, she began a relationship with the writer Alan Sharp, with whom she had a daughter, Rudi. Sharp left Bainbridge at the time of Rudi’s birth.

  In 1957, she submitted her novel, Harriet Said, then titled The Summer of the Tsar, to several publishers. They all rejected the manuscript, citing its controversial content—the story of two cruel and murderous teenage girls. She then published two other novels, A Weekend with Claude and Another Part of the Wood. Her real success, however, came when she befriended Anna Haycraft, an editor, writer, and the wife of Colin Haycraft, owner of the Gerald Duckworth publishing house. This friendship marked a major turning point in her writing career. Anna loved Harriet Said, and Gerald Duckworth published it in 1972 to critical acclaim, establishing Bainbridge as a fresh voice on the British literary scene.

  After the success of Harriet Said, the Haycrafts put Bainbridge on retainer and found her a clerical job within the company. During her time working for the Haycrafts, Bainbridge wrote several novels, all positively received by critics, some of which were adapted into films—An Awfully Big Adventure, Sweet William, and The Dressmaker.

  Bainbridge’s earlier novels were often influenced by her past. The characters from The Dressmaker were based on her aunts, and A Quiet Life drew from her relationship as teenager with a German prisoner of war. Her 1974 novel, The Bottle Factory Outing, was inspired by her real experience working part-time in a bottle-labeling factory.

  In 1978, Bainbridge felt she had exhausted her own life as a source of material and turned to history for inspiration, beginning a new era in her career. She discovered a diary entry of Adolf Hitler’s sister-in-law and based her first historical novel, Young Adolf, on Hitler’s supposed vacation to Great Britain. She wrote other books in this genre—Watson’s Apology, Every Man for Himself, The Birthday Boys, Master Georgie, and According to Queeney. At the time of her death, she was writing The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, about a young woman visiting the United States during Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, which was published posthumously.

  In addition to her work as a novelist, Bainbridge was also a journalist, frequently contributing to the Evening Standard, and she was the regular theater critic at the Oldie.

  Over the course of her career, Bainbridge became a literary celebrity, and was named a Dame of the British Empire in 2000. She remained in the same home on Albert Street in Camden until her death in 2010.

  Beryl Bainbridge with her mother Winifred in Formby, Liverpool, circa 1938.

  Bainbridge with her husband at the time, Austin Davies, on their wedding day in Liverpool, England, 1954.

  Bainbridge with her friend Washington Harold in California, 1962.

  Bainbridge at her home in Albert Street with Davies and their two daughters, Jojo and Rudi in 1969.

  Bainbridge in the back garden of her home in Camden Town in the 1980s.

  Bainbridge speaking at a literary event in the early 1980s.

  Bainbridge in a bath chair while spending time with her daughter and grandchildren outside her home in NW1, circa 1988.

  Bainbridge in her home in NW1, smoking next to a mannequin of Neville Chamberlain, circa 1992.

  Bainbridge in her home at NW1, circa 1992.

  Bainbridge with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, where Bainbridge was damed, in 2001.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1972 by Beryl Bainbridge

  Cover design by Drew Padrutt

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3990-1

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10038

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