A Quiet Life

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘Oh heck,’ said Mother. She raised dramatic eyes to Father.

  Alan thought, I can get out now. They’re united by a new disaster.

  ‘It was one of those Germans,’ Madge said. She had stopped crying. One plump leg, scratched on the calf by brambles, kicked convulsively at the coal bucket. A thin trickle of sand spilled from her ankle sock on to the tufted rug. ‘He looked like Adolf Hitler.’

  ‘Look at the state of you,’ cried Father in a torment. ‘Look at that damned thing on your head.’

  He flung out his arm in passion and set the lampshade rocking. The shadows raced across the wallpaper.

  ‘He had a little moustache,’ persisted Madge.

  ‘But what did he do?’ asked Mother, fearful.

  ‘He chased me.’

  Madge began to cry again. She looked too big to be crouched there in a lump on the floor, clutching Mother’s knees. Look at the effect she was having. Alan couldn’t bear to watch Mother’s face, small mouth closed tight with suffering, eyes full of dread as she gazed at Father. As if Father knew how to cope. It was cruel of Madge to be carrying on so. Alan knew she wasn’t telling the truth – he could tell by her voice. She sounded satisfied, as if she sensed that the danger was over and they couldn’t fault her now. Father knew she was lying, but what could he do? He was beaten by her. He turned hopelessly in front of the fire, round and round on the rug like a dog preparing for sleep, hemmed in by the furniture and the dimensions of the small room.

  ‘What happened then?’ cried Mother. ‘Did he do anything rude?’

  ‘He didn’t catch me,’ wailed Madge.

  All at once Father, goaded beyond endurance, bent to snatch the panama from her head. It rose a fraction, and, secured by elastic under the chin, snapped back into place. He stood with a fistful of withered leaves.

  ‘Behave yourself,’ warned Mother, fierce and protective, straining Madge closer to her heart.

  I have to move now, thought Alan, or not at all. If he waited, something unforgivable might be said. Someone would retaliate – Madge would interfere, Father would chuck the sugar bowl at the wall, the three of them would lapse into a silence more brutal than words. He eased himself from the table and took the teapot into the scullery as though to make a fresh brew. He opened the back door and stood by the fence, listening. Behind the net curtains the voices continued; nobody missed him. He left the teapot in its woollen cosy at the side of the drain and wheeled his bike down the path and across the grass. It didn’t matter any more about the flower beds. He rode furiously down the street, eyes smarting as the cold air rushed to meet him. He turned left at the telephone box and sped through the gap between the row of cottages ringed by elms, up the dirt bank and into the field. He could see the flare of the sodium lamps arched high above the unseen roundabout at the foot of the hill. He pedalled faster. He would not have cared if his wheel had buckled on a stone and flung him to the damp earth. All that mattered was that he should get away from the house. Try as he might to shut out the voices, he heard them arguing still. (‘Wearing my fingers to the bone …’ ‘Don’t use that tone to me …’)

  He shot past the dense mass of the blackberry bushes; the stray briars tore at his sports jacket … (‘I’m like mud in me own home.’) … He saw Father, grotesque in his dark blue beret – like a tank-commander stricken by shell shock – clutching that handful of breaking leaves.

  He wore himself out; he was forced to stop and rest on the handlebars of his bike. He felt wretched, as if he was hungry, but then he remembered he’d finished his tea before Madge burst in with her daft story and her silly hat. Somewhere behind the wire-netting of Mrs Allinson’s yard, a hen squawked, fighting for space in the coop. He couldn’t rid himself of the image of Father, now isolated in the upstairs bedroom, flouncing in worn slippers between the window and the cane chair by the door, while down below in the kitchen Mother and Madge sat whispering, conspiring, eating pieces of jam roll before the fire. How could he possibly enjoy himself at the youth club?

  Sullenly he dragged his bike over the ditch and up the slope into the park. He hadn’t even washed; maybe his clothes stank of pig swill. If he tried to spruce himself up before he played ping-pong, Ronnie was bound to make some remark about him and Janet Leyland. She wouldn’t be there anyway. Even if she was, she’d be too busy talking to her friend Moira to notice him. And if she did notice him, what good would that do? He’d kissed her once, at Donald Eccles’s party two years ago, when he was fifteen. In Mrs Eccles’s lounge, in the dark. There hadn’t been the occasion to do it again.

  All the same, he removed his bicycle clips, so that his trousers would be less creased, before he remounted and pedalled towards Brows Lane. Once on the sloping road, he freewheeled with flapping coat round the corner into the village, past the Post Office and War Memorial, until, leaning sideways so that his mud-guard scraped the kerb, he slithered to a halt beside the church. On the cinder path, scuffing red dust, his friends waited. They thumped him on the back; he was popular.

  Alan thought of Ronnie as his best pal. He spent a lot of time at his house. Ronnie was neat and slender and slicked his hair back with Brylcreem. Every day he wore a clean shirt. Alan was paler, more powerfully built. He made the one shirt do for most of the week. He was sent to the barber once a month and his head was so cropped and bristling that he imagined he looked like a convict. Mrs Baines let Ronnie bring his friends home; even if Mr Baines was there, she didn’t make them stay on the porch.

  ‘Have you got those verses?’ Ronnie asked.

  ‘I’m two places off,’ Alan lied. A prefect at school was passing round a poem, four pages long, about a girl in the women’s air force and a sailor. It had been his turn to take it home last Wednesday. He had hidden it in the dancing shoes he used to wear at ballroom classes, and someone – he knew it must be Mother – had removed it.

  ‘I thought you were fetching it Wednesday,’ Peter said.

  Alan didn’t reply. He didn’t want to think about it.

  They swaggered into the church hall and stood self-consciously beside the piano at the foot of the stage. Under the bright lamps, shaded in metal, they were lost for words. Mr Holroyd and the vicar were sitting at a baize table, making out lists for choir practice. Alan liked the vicar, but when he was with his friends he pretended otherwise. Mrs Compton was waddling in and out of the kitchen, getting the table ready for refreshments. Cyril, who had married the war widow from the library, was talking to Hilda Fennel. Janet Leyland hadn’t come.

  ‘Give us a tune,’ said Ronnie, opening the lid of the piano.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Alan. It was true; he could only play for Mrs Evans. The vicar told them to stop messing about. ‘Table tennis or dramatics,’ he warned. ‘You are not here to tinkle the ivories.’

  ‘Please sir,’ said Ronnie coldly, ‘you’ve locked up the nets.’

  It was then that Hilda Fennel called across the hall, loud as anything under the tin roof, ‘Can I have a word with you Alan?’ Hilda was twenty-two and sang in the choir. Last Christmas, during the carol service, she had burst into tears; no one had known where to look.

  ‘What do you want?’ Alan said.

  Cyril wasn’t talking to her. He just stood there, watching her face. After a moment he walked away.

  She said: ‘I don’t know how to put it.’

  He couldn’t help her. He stared at his friends opening the lockers under the windows.

  Hilda had pointed breasts under a white blouse. He could see them without looking at them. Janet Leyland was more rounded, more of a piece; she kept her arms crossed most of the time.

  ‘It’s delicate,’ said Hilda.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he muttered.

  ‘It’s about your Madge.’

  ‘Beg your pardon?’ he said stupidly.

  He didn’t think she knew Madge. Madge never came anywhere near the youth club, nor did she attend the church. The vicar had come once to the house to try to persuade her to join the choir
. Mother lit the gas fire in the dining room and there was an awful fuss trying to get Madge to go in and talk to him. Father had to hide in the scullery because he wasn’t wearing a collar. Madge talked a lot of tommyrot about worshipping God in the garden.

  ‘Is she sixteen?’ asked Hilda.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘Is that all?’ She seemed shocked.

  ‘She’s big for her age,’ he said lamely.

  It seemed to make up Hilda’s mind, Madge being a year younger than expected. ‘I think you ought to know what she’s been up to. She was near the Power House this afternoon, with a German prisoner.’

  ‘She didn’t mention she was there,’ he said. Madge wasn’t allowed near the Power House. It was dangerous.

  ‘They were talking.’

  ‘They weren’t talking,’ he told her. ‘She was running away. She told us.’

  ‘She was standing still when I saw her … talking.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you ought to know.’ She was looking over his shoulder at Cyril.

  ‘Thank you very much, Hilda,’ he said.

  He had played two games of ping-pong when Janet Leyland arrived. Moira wasn’t with her. She wore a red frock with a bouncy sort of skirt and thick black shoes. He wanted to play ping-pong again, so as to be occupied, but it wasn’t his turn at the table. He was forced to sit idle on the bench beside the kitchen door and watch. In his embarrassment he shouted out things to Ronnie and Peter. They kept telling him to shut up; they hadn’t noticed Janet. She chatted to Mrs Compton. He didn’t dare risk turning his head away in case he exposed the livid pimple that was gathering on his neck. It was worse for her, he thought, on her own without Moira. She too, in her way, was exposed. It wasn’t that he couldn’t talk to her – he knew words to say – it was afterwards that bothered him: asking or not asking if he should walk her home. What if she said yes and they had all that way to go, up Deansgate and past the Grapes Hotel, in silence, bumping against each other in the darkness, apologising? What would he do with his bike? In her red frock she smouldered by the radiators, doubling her chin as she listened to Mrs Compton. All at once he heard her say ‘Goodnight,’ and she was walking away, brushing against the baize table, her clumsy shoes echoing on the bare boards. He followed; he imagined she would think he was going to the gents. She was in the vestibule reaching for her coat on the peg. She said, ‘Hello Alan,’ pushing her arms into the sleeves of a grey worsted coat.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, slow and casual. ‘I didn’t see you. Have you been here long?’ His ears burnt and his heart beat fast.

  ‘I’m just off,’ she said.

  ‘Been keeping well?’

  ‘So-so,’ she admitted. They met during the week and twice on Sundays, for Morning Service and again at Evensong. They faced each other in the choir stalls; he had never sought her out before. As she did up the buttons of her coat, she confided: ‘I saw your dad on the train the other day. He’s very merry.’

  He said: ‘Yes, he is that.’

  ‘He’s always so jolly. He called me a bonny girl.’

  She sounded pleased. Father called Madge bonny and she was on the fat side. He supposed Janet was too, but it was more evenly distributed.

  ‘Your mother wears lovely hats,’ Janet said.

  She seemed obsessed by his parents. She was ready to go, insulated against the January night, her gloves on and her collar turned up about her neck.

  ‘Shall I walk you home,’ he said. ‘It’s time I was off.’

  ‘Better not. Mother wouldn’t like it.’

  Still, she dithered in the chilly vestibule, patting her dry curled hair, waiting.

  ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ he said. ‘After Evensong … We could go for a walk.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she conceded. And she went, pink and self-righteous, out of the door.

  He was relieved, in a way, that Mother wouldn’t like it. He had already found that it was usually better to look forward to something than to experience it. But he couldn’t settle to ping-pong any more. He told Ronnie he was leaving early because he had Latin homework to do. It wasn’t true. He hadn’t given Mother notice that he wanted to use the dining room. He did his studying in overcoat and scarf – minus his shoes – resting his books on an old blanket kept for the ironing, so that he wouldn’t harm the table. He wasn’t allowed to use the upstairs room; there was nowhere to work except the bed and she forbade that in case ink spilt on the eiderdown.

  It was Mother who had retreated upstairs, not Father. He was sitting in the dark with Madge, listening to a play on the wireless. With both armchairs pulled close to the fire, it was difficult to enter the kitchen.

  ‘Let me in,’ pleaded Alan, trapped between the door and the chair-back.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Madge. ‘We’re listening.’ He had to stay where he was, one leg in the scullery, until she was ready to shift. The wireless was balanced behind the curtains. It was too big for the windowsill and jutted out into the room; the valves never burnt out, but it had cracked across the front in three places and been patched together with strips of black adhesive. Because of its size Father was forced to sit at an acute angle at the table, eating his food hunched over his plate. Mother wanted it thrown out. Once she nearly succeeded. She was upstairs shaking the bathroom mat out of the window. It was damp and heavy and slipped from her fingers on to the aerial stretched from the kitchen window to the top of the fence post. Father was sitting listening to the news at the time. The wireless leapt on the sill and toppled between chair and table. A man inspired, Father flung himself forward and caught it in his arms. He swore like a trooper.

  ‘It’s over now,’ Father said, standing up and switching on the light. ‘Let the lad in.’

  His beret lay on the floor beside the coal bucket. He had one piece of black hair that he combed the wrong way to cover his bald spot; without his hat it hung down over his ear. He bent to poke the fire, cautiously resting his hand on the mantelshelf above. Mostly he misjudged the distance and straightened up too soon, striking his head in the process. He had a small scab, dark brown and never quite healed, to show for it. He sat back in Grandfather’s despised chair, wiping his hands on his battle-dress. He looked mournfully at Madge.

  ‘It was grand,’ she said. ‘When his little girl went missing …’

  Father nodded. They were both overcome. They stared, harrowed, into the flames.

  ‘You look as if you’ve had a good laugh,’ Alan said, struggling to sit at the table.

  Father gave him a sheepish look and blew his nose. He was moved to tears by a good play. He was often found mooning in the firelight, handkerchief at the ready, listening to the Third Programme. It afforded him some sort of outlet.

  Alan eased his collar and winced.

  Quick as a flash Father noticed. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Have we got another boil?’ He jumped to his feet to examine and probe.

  ‘Get off, Joe,’ shouted Alan, jerking his head away. It was the name he called his father when he was apprehensive or angry. Father thought the world of Stalin; he said the Russians had won the war.

  ‘Keep still,’ bade Father. ‘Let’s have a look.’ He prodded the inflamed skin with hard thumbs.

  ‘It’s only a pimple,’ protested Alan.

  ‘It’s a boil. You’ll need a poultice.’

  He told Madge to fetch the kaolin. Alan had to take his chair into the hall so that she could get into the pantry. He called to her to bring out the tea caddy while she was about it.

  ‘You can’t make tea,’ shouted Father. ‘Your mam’s hidden the teapot out of spite.’

  He ground the kaolin mixture into a paste with water. He laid out the scissors and the roll of lint. Alan took off his tie and removed his collar stud. Madge fingered the swelling on his neck.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ said Father, pushing her hand away. ‘You’ll make it spread.’

  Father was fond of playing the doctor. He tore a portion of old sheet int
o a square and lined it with lint. He shaped it carefully, as if he was making a nest for a fledgling. He encouraged himself as he worked. ‘That’s it … There we go …’ Spooning the kaolin on to the pad, he knelt on the hearthrug, lock of hair dangling, to warm the mixture at the fire.

  ‘Not too hot,’ warned Alan.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ said Father.

  When he was ready he told Madge to push Alan’s head down.

  ‘Not yet,’ cried Alan. He half turned; he wanted to see what it looked like, the thing that was going to hurt him.

  Father advanced with the pad held in one upturned hand, like a waiter balancing a tray. He scowled.

  ‘Bend over. The blasted thing’s burning a hole in me palm.’ He slapped the poultice down.

  ‘Is it hurting?’ asked Madge, squatting on the floor and peering up at him.

  ‘It’s perfectly all right,’ said Father, as if he was in a position to judge.

  Alan refused to cry out. His eyes smarted with the pain. The paste seared his skin and squelched upwards from the cotton pad into his hair.

  ‘Good lad,’ praised Father. He wound another strip of sheeting about Alan’s throat, making a muffler for him, not too tight, not too loose. ‘I’m off,’ he said, when it was done. ‘I’ll lay a towel on the pillow for you.’ And he stomped upstairs to bed, full of good humour.

  ‘You could have said thank you,’ said Madge, folding the remains of the lint and picking threads of cotton from the rug.

  Alan couldn’t answer; he wasn’t yet in control. He tried to rest his head on the table, but the bandage constrained him. He pushed his chair backwards to the edge of the hearth to give himself more room. Madge couldn’t pass him to go to the scullery without falling into the fire.

  ‘I’ll never have children,’ she grumbled, crawling under his legs on hands and knees. ‘Nailed up in little boxes, no room to stand up.’

  ‘You were seen this afternoon.’ He felt vindictive. ‘Near the Power House.’

  ‘It’s like cruelty to animals,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why they ever bothered … they’re as miserable as sin.’ She was in the scullery, rinsing the cup and spoon under the tap. ‘It’s worse than burning in hell fire.’ Once she started she could be very extreme.