A Quiet Life

by Beryl Bainbridge

‘You’re not to go,’ he said firmly, looking anxiously at her pale face.

  ‘I must,’ she whispered. ‘I promised.’ She jammed the frayed panama on to her head and began to fasten the buttons of her raincoat. Mother shouted from the kitchen for them to get out of the hall and stop making a mess.

  ‘You’re being a fool,’ he said. ‘Can’t you see how reckless you’re being?’

  ‘It’ll happen some time,’ she said reasonably. ‘It happens to everybody sooner or later. If it’s got to be this soon, I’d rather it was someone I know.’

  She was watching him intently as though she hoped he would still say something to prevent her going. Something vital and conclusive. He couldn’t think of anything.

  As she opened the door it stopped raining.

  ‘You see,’ she said miserably. ‘It’s a sign. It’s meant to be.’

  He took hold of her arm.

  ‘If you go out into that garden, I’ll tell on you. I will.’

  ‘Silly old Alan,’ she said. ‘You know you won’t. What difference would it make? I can run faster than them. They’d have to nail me to the fence.’

  She walked backwards down the path, taking her time, waiting for him to come up with a convincing argument. Her face looked desperate, like the time she’d been sent to the chiropodist to have a corn removed. She’d wanted him to prevent that too.

  After a moment she disappeared behind next door’s hedge. When he ran on to the pavement, expecting to see her huddled against the lamp post, he was outraged to observe her sprinting along the road, head back and arms moving like pistons, in the direction of the railway crossing.

  Mother went upstairs to lie down. He hovered on the landing, trying to think how he could tell her about Madge. She called out fiercely: ‘Get away you big lout. Can’t you find something to do?’

  He trailed downstairs and went into the garden. The sky had cleared, the grass glittered under the weak sunlight. Father had emerged from the greenhouse and was staring gloomily at his flooded vegetable patch.

  ‘Blasted climate,’ he said. ‘Nothing but a quagmire.’

  ‘Madge has gone out again,’ said Alan.

  ‘If I had my way,’ said Father. ‘I’d pack the whole thing in and sell it back to the council. Let them breed crocodiles in it.’ He squelched towards the fence, calling over his shoulder: ‘I suppose your mother’s gone out too. They’re a pair, they are.’ And he gave a short hoot of laughter that was borne away on the wind.

  ‘She’s not gone anywhere,’ he said. ‘She never does.’

  ‘Ahh!’ said Father, full of contempt.

  ‘She’s got nowhere to go. She sits down at the station every night, on her own in the waiting room.’

  Father turned and looked at him. ‘Fine tale,’ he sneered. ‘Do you think I’m soft in the head?’ He brought up his boot, clogged with mud, to stamp the spade into the earth.

  ‘She can’t stand being in the same room with you,’ cried Alan. His whole body started to tremble. ‘You make her sick. You make her flesh creep.’

  Father stood there leaning on his spade. Gradually his head began to wobble as if someone was shaking him by the throat. Watching him, Alan was consumed with malice. He felt light and powerful as though a weight had shifted from him. He turned and ran back up the lawn, muttering, as he leapt in one bound over the privet hedge, ‘You mean old bastard, you bastard, you rotten old bastard.’ He kicked open the scullery door, not caring if he disturbed Mother, and stood in the kitchen with his arms stretched above his head, both fists tightly clenched. It couldn’t last. After a few moments he didn’t feel vindictive any more, only worn out. He slumped guiltily at the table, not daring to look out of the back window in case Father lay face downwards in the mud beneath the poplar trees. For a while he was frightened at what he had done but then he remembered all the times his father had said things to hurt Mother and Madge and himself. He’d forgotten most of them; they were only words spat out in anger. He was encouraged by the sound of Father running busily up and down the path; his beret bobbed past the window. Presently, from the porch, came the sound of wood being sawn.

  Father wasn’t prostrate with grief. He was cutting another square of board to replace the shattered glass – something to keep out the rain until the glazier came.

  ‘Alan,’ called Mother.

  He didn’t answer at once. She was always shouting orders for refreshment, as if she lived over a tea shop.

  ‘Alan,’ she cried again, urgently.

  He went into the hall.

  ‘He’s cutting down the tree,’ she said, crouched at the top of the stairs in her underskirt.

  Father stood on the rockery with his back to the porch, one hand braced against the thin trunk of the sycamore. The saw, old and rusty as it was, had bitten deep into the wood.

  ‘It’ll fall the wrong way,’ screamed Mother appearing at the upstairs window. ‘He’ll bring down the fence.’

  He ran on to the grass, to the far side of the rockery.

  ‘Stop it,’ he shouted. ‘Stop it.’

  Even as he spoke the saw buckled in Father’s hand, snagged on a knot within the trunk. Father gave a little gasp and let go of the handle. He leaned against the tree and slithered slowly downwards to sit on the whitewashed stones. His eyes were shut.

  ‘Joe?’ said Alan.

  He bent forward and touched his father’s jaw stained green from the wood.

  Father opened his eyes. ‘Help me in, son.’

  There was something different about his face, something fixed, as if the skin had frozen to the bone. He leaned heavily on Alan but there was no substance to him.

  ‘Take his boots off,’ cried Mother, barring the way up the stairs. ‘You’ll ruin my carpet.’

  Father gave a little snigger.

  ‘Ring the doctor,’ ordered Alan.

  ‘Don’t talk soft,’ said Mother.

  ‘Damn you to hell,’ he shouted. ‘Look at his face.’

  Mother couldn’t see Father’s face because he was half turned, nestling like a child with his cheek against Alan’s shoulder. All the same she let him pass. She watched them climb the stairs before going into the front room.

  He laid his father on the bed and tugged off his boots. He didn’t want to disturb him too much, so he went and fetched blankets from the settle and covered him over, right up to the chin.

  ‘It tickles,’ said Father peevishly, clawing at the covers.

  Alan would have liked to hide his father’s face, the high arch of his waxen nose, the dull eyes, grey as pebbles, restlessly gazing at the walls. He could hear Mother’s voice, excited and important, talking on the telephone. She laughed shrilly, several times.

  ‘What’s she on about?’ said Father. ‘Doesn’t she realise I’m a sick man?’

  ‘Hush,’ Alan said. ‘It’s only her way.’

  He walked up and down the room wondering how long the doctor would take. He might be out playing golf. Why didn’t his mother come up? He thought he heard someone crying in the kitchen below.

  ‘Shall I get the brandy?’ he asked.

  ‘Do that,’ said Father. His voice seemed to come from some distance. He lay perfectly still.

  Madge was in the kitchen, hunched in a chair, crying with her hands over her face. Mother was at the mirror combing her hair, titivating for the doctor.

  ‘Hush up,’ he said to Madge. ‘It’s nothing much. You mustn’t worry.’

  ‘Is he still in his dirty old clothes?’ asked Mother. ‘Did you think to change the pillow slips?’

  ‘I changed nothing,’ he shouted.

  He walked out of the back door and along the garden without knowing what he was doing. He watched his feet sinking into the damp grass with every step he took. There was one solitary daffodil beginning to open in the stony border beside the fence. He went into the house and told Mother to take the brandy upstairs.

  ‘What a fuss about nothing,’ she said. ‘Heaven knows what the doctor will think, called
out on a Saturday afternoon.’

  Madge cried louder than ever.

  ‘Be quiet,’ he told her. ‘You won’t help Father making a noise like that.’

  She took her hands from her face and he saw her swollen eyelids and her nose all gummy with mucus.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she sobbed. ‘He went early this morning. I never saw him.’

  ‘Is that the doctor?’ he said, thinking he heard a car.

  ‘I’ll never see him again. Never in all my life.’

  ‘You shut up,’ he cried fiercely. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him. He just needs a bit of rest.’

  ‘Alan,’ cried Mother. ‘He’s here.’

  He ran into the hall and let the doctor in.

  Mother came down smiling and held out her hand.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she said graciously. ‘So sorry to disturb you like this.’

  Alan pushed past her and went up the stairs to look at Father. He had more colour in his face now. Please, he thought, let him be ill a little while longer … just till the doctor’s seen him.

  They were coming upstairs. Father struggled upright in the bed and looked sheepishly towards the door.

  ‘What a dreary day it is,’ said the doctor, walking to the window and gazing into the garden. ‘Rain … always rain.’

  He reached down and held Father’s wrist. Mother went away to see to Madge.

  ‘I do beg your pardon,’ remarked Father civilly. ‘I think I’m going to faint.’ And he lay back on the pillow and closed his eyes.

  The doctor stood a second, feeling his pulse. Then he let go of his hand and pulled roughly at the blankets. He seized Father by the front of his battledress and hauled him half off the bed.

  ‘Help me,’ he shouted to Alan. ‘Get him on the floor.’

  They bundled Father on to the cold lino. His hat fell off. The doctor straddled his stomach and punched him in the chest. Over and over. One potato, two potato, three potato, four—

  It seemed to Alan, crouched there on his knees holding Father’s hand, thumb tipped with sticking plaster, that the doctor was knocking at a door, demanding to be admitted. Only there was nobody in.

  One of the first things Mother did, after they had taken the body away in an ambulance, was to chuck the A.R.P. hat into the dustbin.

  0

  He waited a moment at the top of the station hill still holding the flowers Madge had given him, looking down at the rows of houses that stretched clear to the distant pines. He thought Joan might have come to meet him. She had a part-time job in Southport and most days she had the use of the car.

  He went briskly down the steps to the road, averting his eyes from the old perambulators and rusted stoves that hooligans had flung over the railings on to the once grassy slopes where the crocuses had bloomed. He walked slowly, noting the decaying bungalows behind the privet hedges. His own house was spick and span, freshly painted every five years. He knew a man in town who let him have the paint at cost price.

  He turned the corner and crossed the road. It was a pity about the council estate, but then he supposed people had to live somewhere. The houses were quite decent; there were ornaments in the windows. Fancy Madge wanting the dancing lady. It was only made of plaster. It was just as well Madge hadn’t asked to come and stay for a few days. There wasn’t that much room.

  Approaching the house, he hesitated. He wondered if Joan had one of her headaches. Now that the children were older and more independent, he feared she was sometimes lonely. She spent a lot of time sitting upstairs pretending to do her football pools. It wasn’t her fault. She’d had an unhappy childhood. She didn’t come from a close family, not like him and Madge.

  Turning his back on the house, in case his wife watched from the window, he let the flowers spill from his folded newspaper on to the pavement. Then, squaring his shoulders, he walked up the path.

  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 Dam
e 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 © 1976 by Beryl Bainbridge

  Cover design by Drew Padrutt

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3991-8

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

  180 Maiden Lane

  New York, NY 10038

  www.openroadmedia.com

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