A Quiet Life

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘What a mess,’ cried Father, trousers flapping, hands anchoring the beret to his head.

  Now they were here, there wasn’t anything particular for them to do. Mother turned her back on the sea. She and Janet jigged up and down on the spot to keep warm. Across the ridges of crushed shells and tumbled sand lay the brown streamers of kelp, bulbs swollen, stinking of iodine.

  ‘What a mess,’ repeated Father, staring bleakly about him; what a time he could have with his carpet sweeper.

  ‘You two go off on your own,’ ordered Mother, relinquishing her hold on Janet. She tottered towards Father and sheltered behind his back.

  Alan walked away down the beach. The wind swelled his clothes and bore him along. He heard Janet calling him. Ignoring her, he began to climb the cliffs of sand, gripping the tufts of marram to pull himself higher. He intended to get right away from her, but half way up the rise the grass cut the palm of his hand. He faced the sea and sat down, licking the beads of blood and tasting salt on his tongue. He waited for Janet to catch up with him. She came nearer, her face obscured by the thin silk of her billowing headscarf. Climbing laboriously up the dune she flopped down beside him. She couldn’t speak; her breath had given out. Down on the shore his parents huddled together, small and black, like a bundle of blown rags. Janet stole a glance at him – he knew that look of hers. She saw him as a dear little boy whom nobody understood.

  He showed her his hand.

  ‘You poor little lad,’ she murmured, dragging the scarf from her hair and tying it about his palm.

  ‘Get off,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing.’

  But he was pleased she took care of it. That’s what women were for – to be practical and sympathetic. They weren’t much good for anything else.

  ‘Don’t be cross,’ she said. ‘Just because I was nice to your mum. I’d much rather have walked with you.’

  ‘I don’t mind either way,’ he said.

  ‘She’s got such nice ways … She makes you feel—’ She couldn’t think of the exact word she wanted.

  ‘Nice,’ he said, teasing her.

  She turned her head away in annoyance. The frizzed ends of her hair shook in the wind. ‘She’s nicer than you at any rate,’ she snapped. ‘She communicates. She said she went to a finishing school.’

  ‘She did,’ he said. ‘With nuns.’

  ‘She’s never a Catholic?’

  ‘No, but she went to a convent.’

  ‘She speaks French,’ said Janet with wonder. ‘She can play the piano.’

  She irritated him, going on about his mother’s accomplishments, screaming her praises above the howling of the wind. What had it got to do with her where his mother went to school? The sight of her, flesh impregnable under the armour of that enormous coat, stout legs encased in winter boots, filled him with fury. Spitefully he pushed her sideways so that she lost her balance. She brought her gloved hand up to brush the hair from her face. Sand flew into her eye. She sat crouched over, blinking, whining like a child. He had no patience with her. He scrambled on all fours up the slope, kicking sand behind him like a dog digging a hole. At the very top he straightened and ran headlong down the other side. He was in a shallow valley set among the undulating dunes, earthed with low bushes and clumps of gorse, protected from the wind. He lay on his stomach and rested his head on his arms. He fretted that he couldn’t lie there for long, but had to worry about his mother and father shivering on the beach and Janet whining behind the sand hill. If he were more like Madge, he’d be able to do as he wanted … It was then he heard his sister’s voice. He thought for a moment he’d conjured it up in his head. He stopped breathing. A man spoke. Madge said something else, but he couldn’t make out the sense of it. He looked up and stared about him. He couldn’t see anyone. The man began to sing in a language he didn’t understand.

  ‘Stop,’ he heard Madge say. ‘Sing it slower.’

  The voice began again, exaggeratedly dragging out the words as if it was a record on a gramophone that had begun to wind down. He didn’t know why he felt so angry – the foolishness of her: in broad daylight, with his parents strolling the sands. He inched forward on his belly; he made such a noise he thought Madge was bound to rise from cover like a startled bird. They were somewhere to his left beyond the gorse bushes, behind a small hillock. He didn’t know what he was going to do when he caught them. The scarf shook free from his hand and bowled away in the breeze; he hardly noticed. It was like him and Ronnie Baines playing at commandos when they were boys. Slithering up the dune he peered cautiously down. Madge was lying flat on her back with her panama hat tipped over her eyes. She had her arms spread wide on the soft bed of drifted sand. The prisoner in his green uniform, a black diamond of cloth sewn to the back of his tunic, lay half on top of her. He had brown shoes and white socks. Madge’s school blouse was unbuttoned to the waist. Her raincoat was bunched up. The man was nuzzling her breast and mournfully singing. Even as Alan watched, she brought up her hand, in a gesture he recognised as infinitely tender, began to stroke the man’s head.

  Alan almost sniggered aloud. He fell backwards, careless of the noise he made, and rolled down the slope. Picking himself up he leapt over the stretches of gorse towards the dunes. Janet was still sat hunched in the sand, shielding her face. He dragged her to her feet and tugged her down the cliff.

  ‘Stop it,’ she complained.

  She tried to pull her hand away but he wouldn’t let go. They lunged down the hill and dropped the few remaining feet on to the beach. He was laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked crossly, struggling upright and attempting to brush the wet sand from her clothes. There was an anklet of seaweed clinging to her boot. He rocked backwards and forwards on his haunches with his mouth wide open. He had a piece of gorse stuck to his pullover, coiling outwards like a strand of wire.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter,’ she said. ‘Look at the state of you.’

  ‘I saw Madge,’ he said. ‘With a bloke … back there.’ He waved his hand in the direction of the cliff.

  ‘Where’s my headscarf,’ she wanted to know.

  He sat on the beach, silent now, his face white and grains of sand like stubble grazing his cheek. He was thinking of Madge in her old panama in all that waste of land. She hadn’t been wearing a liberty bodice – she didn’t seem to feel the cold. Why didn’t she act shy – they’d both had the same upbringing? The image of her, those white fingers threading the man’s hair, the white skin of her body tinged with blue by the shadow of her open blouse, filled him with regret. He felt forlorn, cheated – why couldn’t things be like that for him? He shivered and covered his face with his arm.

  ‘What were they doing?’ Janet asked. She sounded belligerent.

  ‘Singing,’ he said.

  ‘Singing?’

  She dragged his arm away. Her nose was red. One eye was inflamed from rubbing at it, and there was a crust of dried sand at the corner of her mouth. He couldn’t imagine her undoing one button of that blasted coat without the blood freezing in her veins.

  ‘Why are you so upset?’ she demanded, still in that harsh, matter-of-fact voice.

  She looked down the beach to see if his parents were in sight. The shore was deserted. The tide was coming in, the sky darkening. That much nearer, on delicate legs, the seabirds stalked the edge of the waves.

  ‘You didn’t see them,’ he said. ‘They’re not like you and me.’

  She knew he was criticising her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean,’ she asked. ‘What are we like, then?’

  ‘We’re not like anything,’ he said. ‘That’s what we’re like.’

  ‘Just because we don’t go about singing,’ she retorted. She was near to tears herself. She left him. She plodded off down the beach. Only a short way. She returned and stood looking down at him, all her curls messed up and her lipstick smeared. ‘I don’t understand you,’ she said dully, unable to touch him. ‘I’m out of my depth.’

  His school was one sto
p down the line from Madge’s. He said he had a dental appointment and he left early and got out at Crosby and waited outside the station for her. Madge was late. Other girls came in their school uniforms and ran down the ramp towards the barrier. He turned the corner thinking he might have missed her. She was standing alone with an umbrella in her hand, facing a line of grammar-school boys, taunting them. She was in her ankle socks in a puddle of rainwater with her shoes tied to her satchel by the laces. He dodged out of sight. He heard shouts and running feet. The boys ran out into the main road and Madge followed brandishing her umbrella. A boy in short trousers, cap rammed sideways over his ear, stopped to face her. He swung his bulky briefcase in an arc and caught Madge on the side of the head. She sprang forward and whacked him on the shoulder. He ran, red in the face, after his friends.

  She saw him standing against the wall. ‘Hallo, Alan,’ she said. ‘Fancy seeing you.’

  ‘You must be mad,’ he said. ‘What do you want to behave like that for?’

  ‘A bit of combat,’ she said, ‘does one the world of good.’ She was trying to kiss his cheek – in the road, with all the people passing by.

  Madge wouldn’t go down the ramp like any normal person. She insisted on dragging him through a gap in the hoardings behind the station. He tore his coat on a nail. She was through in a flash, seating herself upon the wooden seat on the platform. The train had gone.

  ‘I saw you,’ he said. ‘On Saturday.’ He had to say it quickly otherwise his annoyance at finding her brawling in the street might have sidetracked him.

  ‘Saturday?’ she said, wide-eyed.

  ‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘I saw you in the sand with that German.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘I’m worried stiff.’

  ‘You’re very naughty,’ she chided. ‘It’s rude to spy on people.’

  ‘Don’t,’ he pleaded.

  On the opposite platform the grammar-school boys had appeared. They shouted insults across the track.

  ‘Run along,’ she called. ‘Don’t be silly little boys.’

  ‘Madge,’ he said. ‘You’re too young. It’s not right to go with men of that age.’

  ‘There’s no rules,’ she said. ‘You can’t lay down rules.’ She was pulling faces at the boys scuffling and parading for her benefit on the far platform. ‘The trouble with you is you’re too hidebound.’

  ‘Put your shoes on,’ he said.

  ‘You’re old before your time. In years to come, lads like you will take to drink, or aspirins. Mark my words.’

  He would have liked to bash her. Instead he said: ‘It’s Mum and Dad I’m thinking of. All they’ve taught you—’

  ‘I was taught nothing,’ she snapped. ‘By anyone. Mother said I’d cut myself when I had me first period.’

  ‘Don’t,’ he moaned. ‘People will hear.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry,’ she told him. She was looking at him tenderly as if he was the one who needed forgiving. ‘I love him. He was captured in Russia. He walked across the frozen snow.’

  He had a picture in his head of Mr Sorsky, with his tape-measure trailing across the ice. ‘It’s not relevant,’ he said.

  ‘Then he went to America. He wasn’t old. He was stuck behind barbed wire. Think of it … looking at black women swollen with disease.’

  ‘Leprosy?’ he queried. ‘That’s Africa.’

  She took no notice. She said the stares of the negro women had been a torment.

  He couldn’t think what she meant – those dusky maidens with unmentionable medical histories swaying melon-hipped beyond the compound. ‘What was he doing in America?’ he asked, dumbfounded.

  ‘He’s going away—’

  ‘Good thing,’ he said. ‘When I saw you—’

  ‘Don’t tell me you and Janet thingy don’t touch each other.’

  ‘We don’t,’ he cried, stung by the truth of it.

  The train came in on the other side. The boys crowded the windows of the compartment and flattened their noses against the glass. Madge waved her umbrella in farewell.

  ‘He’s going away,’ she repeated dismally. ‘He’s being repatriated. Any moment. I want to go with him.’ She didn’t look desperately unhappy. Her voice was quite bouncy and confident. ‘Before the war,’ she said, ‘he worked in a garage. He’s got a motorbike. He thinks the Russians might have taken it. He’s got a sister.’ She nudged his arm as if to accentuate how alike they were, he and the prisoner of war.

  ‘You’d undone your clothes,’ he said. His cheeks flamed.

  ‘I didn’t. He did.’

  ‘You both need horsewhipping.’

  ‘You’re like Dad,’ she said. ‘You think everything’s rude.’

  ‘It’s wrong.’ He thumped the seat to emphasise his point of view.

  ‘You know,’ she said, looking down at her stockinged feet rimmed with mud. ‘It’s no wonder I don’t wear shoes. Never being able to wear them in the house.’

  ‘There’s other things you’re not supposed to do,’ he cried. ‘You don’t worry about that.’

  ‘When he goes,’ she said, ‘I’ll kill myself. I can’t live without him.’

  A girl came along the platform and passed them on the bench. She called ‘hallo’ to Madge.

  ‘That’s Betty Foster,’ Madge told him. ‘Don’t you think she’s got big bosoms.’

  ‘When’s he going?’ asked Alan.

  ‘Soon,’ she said. She bit her fingernail and looked gloomily along the track. ‘He’s so beautiful. Did you think he looked beautiful?’

  ‘I didn’t see his face. I saw your hat.’

  ‘We were only getting close,’ she said. ‘We didn’t do anything. But I might before he goes. I’d like him to be the first.’

  There was no way he could make her see sense. Maybe she knew more than he did. ‘Think of Mother,’ he said.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with Mum. She’s made her mistakes. They’ve got you on their conscience.’

  ‘Me,’ he said, flabbergasted.

  ‘All the stuff the teachers told them at your school meeting.’

  ‘What stuff—’

  ‘You’re nervy … highly strung … They told Father you might have a breakdown.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ he shouted.

  The girl Madge knew, loitering at the end of the platform, turned to look.

  ‘You take things too seriously. Walking round the village with that Janet … looking hunted. Bothering about Dad and his indigestion. Worrying yourself sick about Mum going out. You’re persecuted.’

  ‘They can’t have said that,’ he protested. ‘You’re making it up.’

  The train was approaching.

  ‘Some of it,’ Madge admitted. ‘But not all.’

  She advanced down the platform, swinging her umbrella like Charlie Chaplin. She spoke to the girl with the large measurements.

  He wouldn’t travel with them. He got into a first class compartment and spent the journey standing like a hunchback, with his satchel on his shoulders.

  Even Mother was turning against Madge. There was something sinister in the way the girl stayed out late night after night and didn’t seem to care about the displeasure she incurred. It was harmless, of course, going out walking, even if it was in the dark, but what if she took a step forward and decided to take up smoking or give up school? She looked exhausted in the mornings; she could hardly drag herself out of bed. If she’d have whined when rebuked, or answered insolently, it would have been easier to cope with; but she was so reasonable, so patient.

  ‘I do no harm,’ she said. ‘You’re wrong. I’m right.’

  ‘It’s not normal,’ Mother told Alan.

  ‘I warned you,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t listen.’ He thought if they could just hang on for a little longer, until the prisoner was sent back to Germany, it would be all right. If he told the truth heaven knows what trouble would be caused. Mother and Father wouldn’t deal with it themselves – they’d call in the vi
car and the headmistress of the school. Obviously if the German was staying it would be different. Then he’d have to tell them. So he kidded himself.

  He apologised to Janet Leyland for pushing her down in the sand. He tried to go into details about Madge and the prisoner, but for some reason she didn’t want to know. She’d stopped being interested in his family. She didn’t telephone him after school. When he called at her house on Wednesday night, her mother said she had gone to the cinema with Moira. He thought Mrs Leyland wasn’t as pleased to see him as usual. She didn’t ask him in. Immediately he began to wonder if Janet no longer cared for him. He told himself she was bound to ring him as soon as she came back. He waited at home for three hours – in the hall – in case the wireless drowned the ringing of the bell. He felt wretched. The next day it was worse; it was as if he’d grown used to sitting in a warm room, everybody noticing him, and suddenly the door had been kicked in his face, leaving him outside. He couldn’t sit still. He avoided Ronnie on the train. He was always imagining she would be waiting for him round the next corner, the next hedge, beside the gates of the park. He didn’t go to the club; he was afraid she would snub him openly.

  He sat in the kitchen with Father, listening to snatches of poetry and string quartets.

  ‘Thrown you out of the club, have they?’ asked Father. He preferred to sit either with Madge or on his own. Alan was too restless.

  ‘I’ve some homework,’ Alan said.

  ‘Well, get in the front room and stop messing about.’

  Alan laid the ironing cloth on the table and opened his books.