by David Storey
‘As people.’ She called out the words and the bird, alarmed, flew back with an agitated cry into the near-by tree. ‘You’ve really got one of those cloth-cap mentalities,’ she added.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think I had.’
‘I suppose you’re used to your mother always being at home, and waiting on you. And on your father.’
‘Well, I’m not sure she waits. But she doesn’t work, except in the home,’ he said.
She lay back in the grass, her head propped on her hand.
‘I was probably being too arrogant,’ she said.
‘Is it just conditioning that there have been no great women poets, or composers, or religious leaders, or painters, or philosophers?’he said.
‘What else could it have been?’ she said. ‘You can change anything in a person by changing the conditions, the attitudes they live by. It’s a conscious act of will at first. I’m glad I’m a woman. The whole consciousness of a woman lies before her.’
He looked away. The figure of a man with a gun appeared at the top of the ridge: he stood there for a moment, looking out across the plain from where, in the distance, came the faint panting of an engine. Then, with a slow gesture, he pulled at the peak of his cap and turned away.
‘Yet you could say that someone like Van Gogh, or John Clare, for instance, had more active discouragement from being what they were, or became, than, say, many thousands of emancipated women who were not only supported financially by wealthy husbands, but also had the time and the opportunity to be thinkers or painters or poets.’
‘I’m afraid you’re too set in your ways to understand what I’ve been saying,’ she said. ‘It’s the unconscious element in a woman that inhibits or prevents her from doing these things, that organically restrains her.’
‘Yes,’ he said and with a sigh of something like frustration rolled away.
‘Where are you going?’ she said.
‘Let’s go to the top of the slope’, he said, ‘and see the view.’ He added, calling behind him, ‘There was a man up there a moment ago. He had a gun,’ and a moment later, from beyond the ridge, came the sound of a shot.
When he reached the top of the ridge he waited, reaching down to take her hand and draw her up the last few feet of rock. Beyond the ridge itself lay a narrow field then, beyond that, the stretch of wood leading down towards the lake. All that was visible, however, were the summits of the trees, and the deep, v-shaped incision made by the valley. In the farthest distance, like a smear of blue against the lightness of the sky, stood the profile of the city.
‘It’s like one of those Italian landscapes,’ he said, indicating the remarkable clarity of the air. Even the woodland faded away in lightening degrees of blue. ‘The town must be five miles away at least.’
They stood for a while at the summit of the ridge, gazing back the way they’d come. The man with the gun was visible below them, walking along the edge of the field, gazing at the trees.
‘Wood pigeons. That’s probably what he’s shooting.’
A puff of smoke came from the pointed gun, and seconds later the crack of the shot.
‘That’s something else that men do, I suppose,’ he added.
‘What’s that? ‘She glanced across.
‘Shoot things. And go to war,’ he said. ‘Is that conditioning, too?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course it is.’
The faint sound of an axe came floating from the wood below. Behind them, from the foot of the ridge, stretched the undulating plain, broken up by collieries and woodland. It too had acquired a patina of blue, as if they were looking into the bed of a lake.
‘In that sense it must be difficult,’ he said. ‘I mean dividing the world in that way.’ he added.
‘How must it be difficult?’ she said, her eyes brightening.
‘Even looking at this,’ he said, indicating the view below. ‘Fields shaped by men, by economies thought up by men, the work very largely done by men. Hedges cut by men, railways designed and built by men, for machines invented by men. Collieries staffed by men, providing fuel for industries supervised by men. There seems no end of it once you divide it into two.’
‘And how else should you look at it?’ she said. ‘Should a woman just stand in attendance on all this?’
‘She doesn’t stand in attendance,’ he said. ‘She helps create it.’
Margaret laughed.
‘It’s amazing how deep these prejudices go.’ She started back to the path that led to the patch of grass below.
He followed her down. When he reached the tiny clearing she was folding the bits of paper away, re-packing the bags. She’d brought a thermos of orange juice which she poured into a cup for him to finish.
‘It’s so peculiar,’ he said, half-laughing.
‘What’s peculiar?’ A tone, almost of threat, warning him, had come into her voice.
‘Turning the world upside down. It’s like seeing people’s legs and feet instead of their heads. Surely if women organically had any of the qualities, the other qualities you say they have, they would have shown some indication of it before now.’
‘Of course they’ve shown some indication of it,’ she said. ‘They’ve never had the economic or moral liberty to do anything about it.’
‘I can’t see why they haven’t.’ He shook his head. ‘In a way, you, and people like Marion and Audrey, have more liberty than I have.’
‘To do what?’
‘To be yourselves.’
‘I can’t see that.’
‘Ever since I’ve known anything I’ve been fulfilling other people’s obligations. I’ve been educated to fulfil certain obligations; I’ve worked at manual jobs to fulfil obligations. I’ve never actually once sat down, or been able to sit down, to decide what I actually want to do. I’ve been set off like a clockwork mouse, and whenever the spring runs down a parent or someone in authority comes along to wind it up again.’
‘Perhaps you are oppressed,’ she said. ‘But in a different way.’
‘But I wouldn’t belly-ache about it. Not like you. I wouldn’t draw a blanket over everything.’ He gestured vaguely in the air, still holding the cup she had given him. ‘It’s like seeing life out of one eye only. And condemning anyone who sees it out of two. You and girls like you have got much more liberty than I ever had.’
She laughed, shaking her head, startled by what she’d roused in him.
‘Liberty to be what’s already determined for us. Certainly not for anything different. An illusory liberty. Whereas with you: you could be anything you like. You’ve even got the freedom to work.’
‘I don’t see any freedom in that.’
‘You would do if work of that nature had been denied you.’
‘Anyway, I can’t see anyone changing it,’ he said.
‘Because you don’t want to see anyone changing it,’ she said. ‘You’re so comfortable with things the way they are.’
‘Am I comfortable?’ he said.
She laughed.
‘People are always comfortable. They resist change. It poses too many threats. Even you, if you were honest, would have to admit it.’
‘Admit what?’ he said, frowning.
‘What I’ve just said: it makes you feel frightened.’
‘I don’t mind feeling frightened,’ he said. He stood up, boldly, to indicate his mood.
‘Oh, I don’t mean frightened of challenges, of facing the unknown. But of having your view of yourself, as a man, presented to you in a way you can’t grasp or understand. You see yourself so much as a man, doing manly things, coming from a manly background; it’s what schools and homes like ours instil in us.’
‘I don’t feel manly at all,’ he said. ‘In most ways I feel set against what I’ve been told to become, or felt I ought to become.’
‘Well, that’s the end of one picnic at least,’ she said, suddenly frightened herself of what she had revealed. She handed him the bag, a small haver
sack which he took on his shoulder. His own food he’d brought in a paper carrier; she folded it up now and slid it beneath the flap. ‘Do you want to go on?’ she added. ‘Or shall we go back?’
‘I suppose we better go back,’ he said. The sun was moving down towards the plain. It threw heavy shadows across the slope behind.
They set off slowly around the foot of the ridge. Where the path became clearer and they could walk abreast, he took her hand.
‘It’s strange. I feel in a way it’s come between us.’
‘What has? ‘She swung his hand slowly, to and fro.
‘All this.’ He gestured round. ‘Even the wood at some time belonged to a man’s estate.’
‘It needn’t cloud the future, though,’ she said. ‘Things could be clearer between men and women. They could be equals, couldn’t they, and still be together.’
‘Equal in all things?’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem real. Even when women have got freedom they don’t do much with it.’
‘Why go on with it?’ she said, as if perniciously she’d pushed some thorn against his flesh, regretting it now, almost wishing to draw it out.
‘It doesn’t seem real, that’s all,’ he said.
‘What’s real?’ she suddenly said, and laughed. ‘Real’s only what you’re used to. Would what you feel, for instance,’ she added, ‘be real to your father? Would what he feels be real to you? Are you denying that change mightn’t come with children? If they were brought up to accept nothing else but equality they’d look back on your attitudes as we look back, say, on Viking customs, or some other social paraphernalia that’s never stood the test of time.’
The path had broadened; it ran through the centre of the wood. A rider on horseback appeared beneath the trees, a figure with a dark bowler hat and jodhpurs who, as the horse galloped past, nodded down in their direction.
‘Man or woman?’ he said.
‘A woman.’ She laughed. They turned to watch the dark clods of earth flung up by the horse’s hoofs.
‘There are other inequalities,’ he said.
‘You can draw a line through all of them. They’re like a common point on a graph,’ she said. ‘All lines of inequality intersect.’
The path came out at the side of the lake. A man with a fishing-rod sat beneath the trees. He glanced up as they passed, opened a basket beside him and took out a sandwich. The float rested motionless on the surface of the lake.
‘Stafford is a fatalist,’ he said. ‘He believes, in the end, it comes to nothing. I feel tempted at times into sharing his view. I sometimes wonder, really, what’s the use? You put up a struggle, but what do you struggle for? It’s arrogance to assume that things can change, or that you personally can or should be instrumental in effecting them. At times, even to see a wood like this I find exhausting. Any kind of life in a way makes death all the more appalling.’
‘Or more exhilarating,’she said. ‘It’s an invariable sign of an egotism that’s been deflated for it to lapse into self-pity. What’s Stafford got to be fatalistic about? I’ve never seen him fatalistic when any of his interests are threatened. It’s just that he’s had some things too easy. And other things, I suppose,’ she added, ‘he’s never had at all.’
‘I sometimes think he’s had it harder. Not that it matters, in any case,’ he said, watching her smile then releasing her hand.
They walked on past the end of the lake and came out finally on a narrow road. Some distance farther down they came to a bus stop, and sat down on a wall to wait.
A boy on a bike cycled slowly past.
‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’ she said.
‘Two brothers. Younger than me. One’s eight,’ he added. ‘The other’s five.’ He paused. ‘I had an older brother though who died.’
‘What of?’
He shrugged.
‘Pneumonia.’
‘When was that?’
‘Before I was born.’
‘How long before you were born?’
‘Six months.’ He waited.
‘Is that what makes you so conservative and gloomy?’
‘Oh, no,’ he said, and laughed. ‘Its effect’, he added uneasily, ‘is quite the reverse.’
When the bus came they sat at the front upstairs, with the window wound down. The wind rushed through their hair. The rest of the bus was empty. It rattled into town. Small buildings in the farthest distance were outlined clearly by the now almost horizontal rays of the sun.
He sat with his arm around her. With the wind in their faces they scarcely spoke, calling out as the bus descended a hill, rushing at the slope, laughing finally when the conductor came upstairs to take their fares. ‘Where do you think you’re at? A fair?’ He stood in the gangway a moment, stooping to the air himself, laughing at its force, bracing himself against the swaying of the bus, then, still laughing, going back to the stairs, holding to the seats on either side. ‘Any more for any more?’ he called to them as they got off in the town.
He waited at her stop. ‘I won’t see you for a couple of weeks,’ she said.
‘Why’s that?’ he asked her.
‘My parents think I ought to give school a couple of weeks’ attention, without any distractions.’
‘I suppose, really, it’s only sensible,’ he said.
‘Do you think so?’ she said.
‘No.’ He shook his head.
‘Still, today’s been worth it. Despite the argument,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said.
The bus drew up.
‘Will you give me a ring?’ she said. ‘We could go out a fortnight today, if you like.’
‘It hardly fits in, this sudden compliance, with all your arguments,’ he said.
‘Perhaps I’m really looking to my own interests,’ she said. ‘After all, education, or certain aspects of it, are a way out of the trap. If you can see the trap waiting, of course,’ she added.
He watched her mount the bus. Only after it began to move did he remember her bag and, running along the pavement, handed it to her as she leaned from the door. She called and waved. He stood at the corner, by the cathedral, and watched the bus and her silhouetted figure disappear.
They met once, sometimes twice a week if he came over specially from the college to see her. After the first interval of a fortnight something of a regular pattern was set in their meetings. Perhaps her parents resisted it; he was scarcely aware of it. Most weekends he would go up to her house on the outskirts of the town, talk with her mother as he waited for Margaret to get ready, seldom with her father, who, if he wasn’t engaged with a patient, was out on the golf-course at the back of the house where, occasionally, on some of their walks they would see him, in plus-fours, sweeping at the ball or standing, smoking a pipe, talking to other men beneath the trees. He would look up casually and wave, his concentration on the game or the conversation scarcely interrupted.
‘And isn’t your mother emancipated?’ he would ask her. She’d been one of the first women to go up to Oxford after the First World War. On some occasions, in order to inveigle herself into a meeting or some club activity, she’d dressed as a man. Margaret would listen with a spellbound look when her mother described these incidents, not looking at Mrs Dorman directly, merely adding once she’d left the room, ‘And what did she do with it all, I wonder?’
‘Oh, she’s emancipated,’ she said. ‘Like all women of her generation. And gave it up at the first opportunity to get married and have children. It’s all part of her romantic past. That’s why she goes on about it. It’s all like puberty: growing up. A pang you go through at a certain age. Now she puts it all into women’s meetings: the Women’s Guild, the Voluntary Service, like trying to doctor a sick patient when what’s needed is radical surgery.’
It was a pose, her militancy, a belief at times she couldn’t maintain: at other moments, if he referred to it, she would say, ‘Oh, don’t go on about it, Colin. I have enough to last a lifetime,’ sucking her finger if they wer
e alone, the knuckle of her forefinger, clenching it between her teeth.
On other occasions her brother would be at home. He’d been away to college and was doing his military service: he’d recently passed a selection board and was now an officer cadet, standing to attention in front of the fire, wearing his uniform with its white flash against the collar, beaming down at Margaret if any of her arguments exploded inside the house. ‘And what’s this? What’s this? She was a terrible tyrant when she was a girl. Before, that is, she became a woman. Turned on the waterworks the first sign of trouble. And didn’t the boys who played with her get it in the neck? Many a hiding I’ve had because Margaret flooded at the appropriate moment. If you think you’ve seen a woman cry you’ve seen nothing’, he would add, ‘until you’ve seen our Mag.’
Her brother was a short, compact figure, not unlike the mother. He would stand beside his sister as if her height and slimness were somehow a reproach to his more robust proportions. ‘Oh, fine and dainty,’ he would say savagely to some conclusive argument of hers, taken up, for the sake of peace, by her mother. ‘Oh, fine and dainty: two women in the house,’ stepping briskly to the door from where, a moment later, would come his final remark: ‘It’s the wrong sex they’ve scheduled for conscription, you’ve got my word on that.’
Her father, if he were present, took no part in the arguments. He would sit reading a journal or a newspaper, smoking his pipe, pumping clouds of smoke into the room until Margaret would call out in exasperation, wafting away with either hand, ‘Do you have to smoke that beastly stuff? What if women poured out all that filth?’
‘Women pour out the equivalent in words,’ her brother would say, invariably defeated by his younger sister. ‘Smoke is infinitely preferable if one has a choice,’ taking out a pipe himself and puffing it vigorously in her direction.
One week-end Margaret came home to meet his parents. He’d arranged to meet her at the bus, but whether deliberately or otherwise she came earlier and knocked at the front door before he’d set off. His mother, mystified, had gone to answer it. He heard Margaret’s voice, then, inside the passage: ‘I have got the right house? I’m afraid I got here sooner than I thought.’