A Quiet Life

by Beryl Bainbridge

  Mother came downstairs. She poked her head round the door and said: ‘Mind the table.’

  She went out and slammed the front door. Father was through in an instant.

  ‘That damned woman,’ he wailed. ‘She’s left me again.’

  ‘She’s going to flower-arranging classes,’ said Alan, inspired.

  ‘In winter?’ said Father. ‘What blasted flowers?’

  ‘There’s something different each night,’ Alan said. ‘It’s not just flowers.’ He couldn’t think what Mother was up to. If she had been off to meet Captain Sydney, she’d have gone decked out like a flower herself. She’d have worn her furs and her paste jewellery, not her old coat and headscarf.

  ‘I’ll teach her,’ cried Father. ‘I’ll show her what’s what.’ He prowled round the cold room in his slippers. They were made of red canvas.

  ‘Did you get those off Madge?’ Alan asked, unable to take his eyes from Father’s poppy-coloured feet prancing over the carpet.

  ‘If she’s not home by ten o’clock,’ Father said, ‘I’ll break her neck … You see if I don’t.’ He went back into the kitchen, slamming the door with such force the clock chimed the hour. It was only a quarter to eight.

  Perhaps Mother had slipped next door to visit Mrs Frobisher. It wasn’t likely – she thought her common. Maybe she’d gone to the pictures. He couldn’t concentrate on his books. Every time he looked at the illustrations in his history book he saw Janet’s face. He found himself writing her name in the margin of his exercise book, over and over. He thought if ever she forgave him and he got the chance he’d quite suddenly go off with another girl. Her friend Moira, for one. It would serve her right. He lay with his head on one bent arm for what seemed a long time, staring down at the table. It must be getting late. He tiptoed into the hall and looked at the grandfather clock. It was twenty minutes to ten. Mother wouldn’t come in for another hour, he was sure. Carefully he opened the glass case of the clock and moved the hands back to just under the quarter. He did it very abruptly so as to stop the half hour from chiming. He’d sat down at the table before he remembered the clock in the lounge. The wireless was loud in the kitchen; it made it easier to enter the back room without Father hearing. The clock was on the mantelpiece, set between the boy with the violin and the lady sitting on a lump of rock. He had to alter it in the dark, prising the circular disc off the back and being careful not to trap his fingers on the key. It had a cruel mechanism. Mother had tried to teach Madge the time by it when she was five years old – she made Madge reset it every time she got the hour wrong – the ends of her small fingers bled. Father wound pieces of cotton wool round them and Mother cried tears of remorse. Even now Madge said time didn’t count, it was man-made; she refused to recognise it.

  When he replaced the clock on the mantelpiece he couldn’t hear it ticking. He shook it but nothing happened.

  ‘Alan,’ called Father, from behind the wall. ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘I’m looking for the dictionary,’ he said. He closed the door guiltily behind him.

  When Madge came in he called out to her when she hung her coat in the hall.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said. ‘Hurry up, I’ve got to humour Dad.’

  ‘Mum’s gone missing again.’

  ‘So what?’ she said. She looked as if she’d been squeezed to death under a sandbag. The brim of her panama hat was unravelling. She went in to Father and kicked the kitchen door shut.

  Later she brought a cup of tea through to him. She placed it in the empty grate so as not to harm the table.

  ‘He’s all right now,’ she said. ‘I’ve jollied him up.’

  ‘What’s come over her?’ he asked. ‘Where does she go all the time?’

  ‘He’s like a spoilt child,’ said Madge. ‘He’s got no sense of discipline.’

  ‘He has cause,’ he said hotly. ‘She’s always out.’

  ‘Where’s your Janet thingy then? Has she chucked you?’

  ‘It was your fault,’ he told her. ‘She was with me when I saw you with that Jerry.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Madge said. ‘Blame somebody else. You and my dad … My hat, you’re a pair.’ And she looked at him as if he’d crawled out from under a stone.

  He collected his books together and wiped the table with his sleeve.

  She said: ‘He’s going on Sunday.’

  ‘Good riddance.’

  ‘He wants me to have the seventh heaven—’

  He looked at her astounded. ‘The what?’

  ‘You know … It … I’m going to do it.’

  ‘It?’

  ‘Everything,’ she said. ‘Whatever he wants. So he’ll have something to remember me by.’

  ‘You blasted fool,’ he cried. ‘You’ll land yourself in trouble. You’ll have something to remember all right.’

  ‘I know,’ she said gloomily. ‘But I promised.’

  ‘If you had a decent mother,’ he shouted in fury, ‘if she wasn’t off gallivanting with that friend of Mr Harrison’s, she might have time to notice what you’re up to.’ He regretted he had altered the clocks. He wished she’d come home quick so that Father could break her neck.

  ‘Gallivanting?’ Madge said. ‘Mother? You daft fool. She’s in the waiting room at the station. She sits by the fire with her library book.’

  Oh God, he thought, it’s true … There’s no one telling her she looks nice. ‘The neighbours,’ he said. ‘What if she’s seen?’ He sat down at the table and turned his back on Madge.

  ‘Haven’t you learnt,’ she said, ‘that it’s never important to anyone else. Not really. It’s a nine days’ wonder. You’re only inconvenienced. You’re not upset inside.’ And she had the audacity to put her arm round his neck and beat upon his breast with her clenched fist. He flung her off.

  Hearing the commotion Father came into the front room and demanded an explanation.

  ‘He’s feeling sensitive,’ Madge told him. ‘He’s had a tiff with his girlfriend.’

  Father said they were a couple of savages. ‘Do you want everyone to know our business?’ he whispered, gesturing frantically at the party wall.

  Madge laughed loudly. She went up the stairs sniggering. Father ran after her into the hall, shouting he didn’t know how he’d come by such blasted offspring.

  ‘You can say that again,’ Madge cried. It made her laugh more than ever.

  In the night a storm blew up. The branches of the sycamore tree thrashed against the windows of the upstairs room. Shortly before dawn the pane of glass nearest the chest of drawers shattered and fell into the porch.

  8

  On Friday night Madge stayed in. She confided to Alan that her German had gone into the village to say goodbye to the vicar and his wife. It was just as well because she wanted to keep an eye on Father. He’d come home early and spent two hours making a botched-up job of putting a piece of wood in Mother’s window. He couldn’t seem to cut it to the right size. When he’d finished he had to screw up newspapers and stuff them down the sides. Mother said it looked ridiculous. He was threatening yet again to chop down the sycamore tree. ‘The blasted thing’s a menace. Choking the drains … smashing the glass.’

  ‘The frame was rotten,’ argued Madge. ‘It wasn’t the willow tree’s fault.’

  Alan asked Mother if he could light a fire in the back room. He knew he was wasting his breath – it was cheaper for Mother to sit at the station.

  ‘You keep out of my room,’ she said. ‘Somebody’s been fiddling with my clock.’ She was in the lounge for quite ten minutes trying to get it to work. ‘Alan,’ she shouted. ‘It’s broken.’ She came into the hall and waved it in his face.

  ‘Oh heck,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Perhaps you’ve overwound it.’

  ‘Me?’ she said. ‘Me?’ She was crying in the worst way, silently, without moving her mouth; the tears dripped down her cheeks. They both stood in the doorway of the lounge and watched her replace the clock on the mantelpiece. She was weari
ng a pair of Father’s old socks and Madge’s army slippers. She stroked the glass case and bowed her head.

  ‘It’ll mend,’ said Madge.

  ‘Go away,’ Mother said. ‘Let me be’ – as though she needed to be left alone with the dead.

  They heard her go upstairs and after a while, when she had rinsed her face, come down. Alan and Madge began to talk in loud voices to cover the sound of her leaving the house. Father heard all the same. He huddled in his chair reading the newspaper, one thumb bound with sticking plaster from his carpentry on the upstairs window. He had decided there was nothing worth listening to on the wireless. The room was perfectly quiet save for the scrape of Madge’s pencil as she drew at the table. It seemed to Alan, sitting there with nothing to do, that the silence extended far beyond the confines of the house, encompassing his empty school, the church, the streets, the waiting room where his mother sat in spectacles, reading her stories of mystery and romance. It will go on for ever, he thought, looking about the room, at the single light bulb dangling from the ceiling, last summer’s flypaper, the spread of newsprint behind which his father crouched. Who would prevent the whole of his existence from continuing in this silent fashion? For the rest of his life, until he was an old man, he felt he would hear the absence of the ticking clock in the lounge, the stillness of his mother’s vacant bedroom.

  There was a knock at the front door. Father threw down his newspaper and scuttled in scarlet slippers to the scullery.

  ‘If it’s Mr Harrison,’ he whispered, ‘tell him I’m not here. I’m not in the mood for visitors.’

  He locked the back door as a precaution, as if he expected his friend to barge up the side path and force an entry. Even in all this activity and bustle – the falling paper, the lock turning like a pistol shot – the house remained silent as the grave.

  ‘The bathroom window’s not shut,’ Madge said. ‘You want to be careful he doesn’t shin up the drain pipe.’

  Alan opened the door. The sight of Janet Leyland, standing on the porch in her woolly hat, made him tremble. He hadn’t lost her after all. But almost as soon as she had entered the hall and he saw her clearly, warm coat belted, sensible boots planted upon the crimson carpeting, he wondered what it was he had been frightened of losing.

  ‘It’s you,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve just seen your mother. She said it was all right to call.’

  ‘She had to go out,’ he explained.

  ‘She said we should go upstairs to your room, so as not to disturb your dad.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said.

  He looked at the door of the lounge and hesitated. He called Madge. She came bounding into the hall, demanding officiously: ‘What do you want? I’m a busy woman you know.’ She ignored Janet.

  ‘Do you think it’s all right for us to go upstairs? Mother told her we could.’

  ‘How should I know? What do you want to do?’ She looked at him pityingly.

  ‘I could call another time,’ Janet suggested, taking a step towards the front door.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, making up his mind, and he went up the stairs ahead of her.

  She thought his room was very cosy. On the furniture, transfers of rabbits and ducks showed through the white paint. ‘Ain’t they sweet,’ she exclaimed, peering at the toadstools, the bunnies standing on hind legs.

  ‘It’s nursery furniture,’ he said. ‘From our old house in Hoylake.’ He had a wardrobe, a chest of drawers and a settle in which Mother kept the blankets.

  ‘I called at your house,’ he said. The fact that he could have waited filled him with resentment.

  ‘I know you did.’

  ‘You were out.’

  ‘I’m not clairvoyant,’ she said.

  He was upsetting her all over again. She was tracing with her gloved finger the outline of ducks on the wardrobe door. Awkwardly he took a step forward and embraced her; he hadn’t drawn the curtains and was worried in case Mrs Frobisher saw them. Janet stood stiff and unresponsive, one hand resting on the wardrobe. He touched the waist of her coat and asked: ‘Aren’t you hot?’

  ‘It’s not too warm up here,’ she said, as if they were in the Himalayas. She began however to undo the belt of her coat and remove her knitted gloves. ‘You haven’t got any pictures,’ she observed. ‘Or toys.’

  ‘Toys?’ he scoffed.

  ‘Things,’ she said. ‘Model aeroplanes.’

  ‘They’re under the stairs,’ he told her. ‘My trainset and Meccano. I’ve got things stored under the bed as well.’

  She was wearing a woollen dress and a cardigan; she put her handbag down on the settle and folded her arms. ‘Where was your mother off to this time of night? She looked very pale.’

  ‘It’s the street lamps,’ he said. ‘She’s gone to see a friend.’

  He bent her over backwards and kissed her as he’d seen them do on the films. It took a lot of stamina not to overbalance and topple to the floor; the heel of her shoe dug into his foot. He kept one eye open just in case they stumbled against the chest of drawers and knocked over the vase standing on its paper doily. One side of Janet’s cardigan hung down to the floor – he saw Madge lying in the sand with her blouse unbuttoned. He moved so abruptly Janet fell against the wardrobe.

  ‘What’s wrong now?’ she cried, eyes sparkling, her cheeks rosy.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Cramp.’ And he rubbed his leg. She looked better after he’d kissed her. He couldn’t take his eyes from her flushed face, her softly swollen mouth.

  ‘I missed you, pet,’ she said. ‘I cried every night.’

  ‘I missed you,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Madge told me to come. I met her on the train. She said we shouldn’t be silly.’

  ‘She should mind her own business.’

  ‘Is she still seeing that Jerry?’

  ‘No,’ he lied. ‘He’s been sent back home … to Germany.’

  ‘Well then,’ she said. ‘That’s a load off your mind.’

  Madge came in with a tray of tea. She’d remembered the sugar bowl but she hadn’t provided saucers.

  ‘Is he all right?’ asked Alan. ‘Has he said anything?’

  ‘Nothing sensible,’ said Madge. She asked Janet if she wanted sugar.

  Janet said Yes please and sat down on the bed. Just in time Alan pulled her upright and carefully drew back the counterpane and laid it neatly over the end of the bed-post.

  ‘You’ve no bedding,’ said Janet, looking in surprise at the lumpy ticking of the mattress.

  ‘It’s in the wash,’ he said. ‘I’m putting clean sheets on later.’

  ‘He doesn’t sleep here,’ said Madge. ‘He sleeps with his dad.’

  ‘Haven’t you enough blankets?’ asked Janet, after a pause.

  ‘Plenty,’ said Madge. ‘It’s other things we’re short of. I’ve got a room too but I have to share with Mother. It’s to stop them getting in the same bed. Would you like a biscuit?’

  Alan stood transfixed while Madge was talking, staring at Janet Leyland wrapped in wool, perched on the extreme edge of his unused bed. Even as he watched her she brought up her hand, still clasping the handle of her cup, as though to ward off a blow. She smiled in shock. A rash of small red spots began to spread across her sensitive cheeks. At that moment he started to think of his mother, walking in an orchard … or was it simply the garden of the big house in Hoylake? It was a summer evening … She strolled with Father into the green darkness of the apple trees, humming a little song. He ran a few paces behind, watching her cling to Father’s arm. It was a happy song … He caught up with them and pushed Father away … He seized his mother’s hand. Father laughed and walked back alone up the garden …

  ‘He keeps everything bottled up,’ said Madge. ‘Anything for a quiet life.’

  They were both watching him, Madge defiant, Janet with a queerly elated smile, as if she now had the advantage. He wanted to make some crude joke, some inconsequential remark that wouldn’t betray him.


  ‘Take no notice of her,’ he said finally. ‘It’s only temporary. The room’s damp. It’s just until we get the wall fixed.’

  ‘Or Father,’ Madge said. She began to gather the cups together. She stole a glance at him. Already she was sorry she had been so outspoken. He understood her; she came out with things for precisely the reasons he hid them – to avoid embarrassment. When the rare visitors called and Father was moody, it was Madge’s way to run to the door and announce: ‘He’s in a dreadful temper … I’m telling you.’ The guests stood shaken and alarmed, but having warned them, Madge could relax.

  ‘I must go,’ Janet said. ‘I promised Mother I’d only pop out for an hour.’

  She reached for her coat. She didn’t wait to put it on in the bedroom. She followed Madge hurriedly down the stairs as though she couldn’t bear to be left alone with him. In the hall she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. Like a sister.

  ‘Don’t think about it, Alan,’ she said kindly. ‘All families have their problems.’ Possibly she was thinking of Uncle Arthur.

  Saturday it was raining. The wind blew in gusts, shaking the branches of the trees and flattening the privet hedge. Alan was glad. He couldn’t think that Madge’s Jerry would deflower her in weather like this. Before lunch, the piece of wood wedged in the upstairs window flew across the room like a bird and damaged the wallpaper. Grandfather’s picture fell face down on the chest of drawers. Father wouldn’t come indoors at one o’clock; Alan took his dinner on a plate to the greenhouse. He was sitting on an upturned barrel staring out at the garden. From a distance, approaching him with sausage and bacon, his face appeared to be blurred with weeping.

  ‘Come on in,’ urged Alan.

  ‘Go to hell,’ said Father.

  He ran back up the garden, leaping over the puddles.

  After she had eaten, Madge was in the bathroom for ages. Mother couldn’t understand it.

  ‘You’ll get waterlogged, my girl,’ she called.

  Madge turned the taps full on to drown the sound of her cough. Alan thought she might put on a dress and her Sunday coat, but she came down in her old skirt and blouse.