by Stan Barstow
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘Yes, I did. And I wondered afterwards; I wondered whether it had done either of us any good. Because–’ his hands were trembling now: she felt that his whole body was trembling, and he was breathing like somebody who had just run up a flight of stairs – ‘because,’ he forced himself to say, ‘when I think about you now I feel such an overwhelming tenderness and compassion, I can hardly hold it in.’
She began to cry then. He turned and shifted over in his seat as the tears came.
‘Nancy...’ He reached for her and pulled her close to him, his hand stroking her hair, and saying, ‘Nancy, Nancy, please don’t cry. I don’t want to make you unhappy. That’s the last thing I want. Please don’t cry,’ while, at last, she did cry; she cried and cried, as though her heart would finally break.
She cried because of what was past and because she saw with prophetic clarity what was to come. He needed her because of what he had done to her. He could not live with that without knowing her, and she could not turn him away until a time came, as it must, when he would have to go. She would move back into her own house and he would come to her there. Shyly, gently, with a romantic
yearning, he would reach for her, and she would take him into her bed. He would be gentle there, too, soft with gratitude for the forgiveness of her body; and she would enjoy that, because it had been a long time for her. He would speak then of love, and the possibility of leaving his wife, disappointed at first, then grateful without knowing it, that she would not respond in kind. For something would happen. She did not know when; she did not know what. But something would happen and when it did she would tell him that he was not her man (he was not strong enough for her, though she would not tell him that). He need not be afraid she would cry for him; she had only ever cried for one man and he would never come back, and must he be hurt because she was not hurt again? Did he not want the peace of knowing that he had needed her for a time as she, she would say, had needed him, but that now it was done it was done? Was there no strength to be drawn from that, or was his heart one made for haunting? All this, she saw, would happen before she was alone again; though as she was the stronger and knew what was to come she would in that way be alone all the time.
They sat apart again. Perhaps, after all, she thought, as he did not speak, he would find the strength to draw back now. Unnoticed, a darkening sky had piled up behind the car. Rain suddenly lashed the windows. Nancy shivered. Mr Daymer put his hand in her lap. She answered its pressure with the pressure of hers. Then, knowing full well how it must, must end, she waited for it to begin.
The Glad Eye
When his wife threw Talbot out of the house because she suspected him of screwing around and he finally stayed out the best part of the night a couple of times as if to confirm it, he shrugged and told his friends he was sick of married life and had left her. Which in one way was true, since she had offered him the choice of changing his ways or going, and when he wouldn’t promise, but denied everything in a defence that climbed from baffled innocence to blustering outrage, it ended with his packing a single bag and storming through the door.
Doreen thought she had handled herself extremely well. Though she was screaming inside, she had refused to be drawn into even raising her voice. All the same, he had gone. She had not
expected that. She had seen herself shaming him, then, just possibly, in her own good time, forgiving. It couldn’t be all that serious, because she could not understand what he was looking for outside that she didn’t give him. Not that she was not bitterly hurt: all the time they had lived together while he was getting rid of his first wife, close and snug; and then, when they’d not been married two minutes, he started this, going out when she was on late shift at the petrol station and not coming home before dawn. The sheer barefaced cheek of it took her breath away. So, surprised but implacable, she let him go.
Talbot took temporary lodgings with a workmate, a married man with two children, who had a spare bedroom. Hollins’s wife, a quiet woman, looked sideways at Talbot, but said nothing. Hollins himself, dismissing Talbot’s initial explanation, told him he should either never have started playing away, or shown more sense in covering it up.
‘Mick,’ Talbot said, ‘I got pissed a couple of times and kipped down here.’
‘First I’ve heard about it,’ Hollins said. ‘Is that what you told her?’
‘I tried, but she wouldn’t have it.’
‘And it’s what you want me to say if she ever asks?’
‘Would you?’
‘Nay, lad, I might, but I can’t speak for the wife. And where were you, as a matter of interest?’
But Talbot’s face closed up.
He had met his first wife again after a long interval, running into her on the street in Leeds one day when he was buying discount spares for his car. They were face to face before either saw the other and then, though he might have gone on with a muttered word, she stood her ground and appraised him with that oblique dry look he knew of old, that look that said she had no illusions about him, so he needn’t try it on with her. He’d liked that when they met the first time, when she let him see she was interested. No pussyfooting about with her: she let you see what she wanted. And look where it had got her.
‘How’re you keeping, then?’
‘I’m okay.’
‘You’ve shaved your moustache off.’
He touched his bare upper lip. ‘Aye.’ He had worn it because he had such a baby face: that soft skin, those deep-set blue eyes.
‘Grown up a bit, have you? Don’t feel you need it to hide behind now?’
‘It’s a change.’
She had liked it. ‘Got married again, did you?’
‘Oh, aye. What about you?’
‘Me?’ She laughed and shook her head. ‘Not me.’
‘I wondered.’
‘Did you? I heard you were living with her.’
‘Oh, we were. Before.’
‘It can’t have been long enough to sort you out.’
‘How’d you mean?’
‘Before you put a ring on her finger.’
‘She knew what she wanted.’
‘If not what she was getting.’
‘T’same thing.’
‘Oh, no,’ she said, shaking her head again. ‘Never in this wide world.’
‘There’s no use you starting slagging me now.’
‘No, it’s got nothing to do with me now. Are you working?’
‘Aye. What about you?’
‘I am at present. No knowing how long it’ll last, though, things being the way they are.’
‘They’ll pick up.’
‘So folk keep saying. Voting Conservative now, are you?’
‘Things are bound to pick up.’
‘Because they can’t get much worse?’
‘I just bat on, get me work done.’
‘You always were a grafter, I’ll say that much for you.’
‘Anyway, so you’re all right?’
‘Yes, I’m all right.’
‘Got a chap?’
‘Mind your own business.’
‘Summat suits you.’ With some of the old ease, he reached for and nipped gently the narrow roll of flesh under the T-shirt above the tight waist of her jeans. She took a step back.
‘It’s being rid of bother that suits me.’
‘You’re letting yourself go.’
‘Not me. That can come off any time I like. Your ways kept me down to skin and bone.’
‘There you go again with your slagging. Still can’t admit there were faults on both sides.’
‘Oh, I don’t know why I waste my time talking to you. You’ll never change.’
But he liked that extra flesh on her, that soft roundness.
‘
Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’m glad I bumped into you, because I’ve a bone to pick.’
‘What’s that, then?’
‘You owe me some money.’
‘How’s that?’
‘You had a maintenance order made out against you. I’ve never had a penny piece.’
He affected surprise. ‘I signed a banker’s order. You should have got it regular.’
She grinned. ‘Banker’s order. Whenever did you have a bank account? Cash in hand, that’s what you always believed in.’
‘Anyway, you’re managing, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I’m managing. And you can stuff your maintenance, for what it’s worth. I only asked for it on principle.’
‘Well then, there’s no need to get bitter about it.’
‘Bitter? You don’t know the meaning of the word. You lead a charmed life. Folk let you get away with murder. Is she soft like that an’ all?’
‘She looks after me and I look after her.’
‘Just like we were, eh?’
‘We had some good times.’
‘Were they worth it, though?’
‘You didn’t seem to think so.’
‘No. You can only stand so much. Then you want to get rid and start clean again.’
‘Where’s it got you, though?’
‘I’m my own boss. I can come and go as I like. And I don’t spend half my time wondering what you’re up to.’
‘It must be lonely, though, isn’t it?’
She caught the look in his eye and took his meaning.
‘I don’t have to have a chap at any price.’
‘So you haven’t got one at all.’
‘Who said so? I told you before – mind your own business.’
She moved, stepped round him. He stood aside. They had exchanged positions when he said, ‘Are you going straight home?’
‘I might be, I might not.’
‘Are you on the bus?’
‘I shall be, when I’m ready.’
‘I’ve got the car on a meter round the corner. I’ll give you a lift.’
‘You’ve no need.’
‘It’s on me way. Come on.’
With all the appearance of his old assurance, he walked away from her and turned the corner without looking back. He was opening the passenger door of the old pale blue Ford when she came up behind him.
‘How long have you had this?’
‘A couple of weeks. I gave a bloke fifty quid for it. It was always letting him down and he couldn’t knackle with it like I can. It misses a bit, but I’ll get it right.’
He was turning the ignition key, but the engine wouldn’t fire. He got out, lifted the bonnet and touched something under there, coming quickly back round and catching the engine on the throttle as it throbbed into life.
‘Flooded.’
For some reason then he turned his head and gave her the direct open grin she remembered from the first time she had ever seen him, and for a second it was as though all that had happened between then and now had never been. But it would always be the same with him, she thought. As with his cars, so with his women. He would knackle and fiddle, patch and make do, and grin as he had grinned now, happy in the moment of temporary triumph. Something told her to get out now and leave him, but before she could translate it into desired action he had the car in gear and was moving off.
She began to direct him as they left the city and entered the built-up fringe which joined it to its satellite towns.
‘I know the way.’
‘No, you don’t.’ He looked at her. ‘Not any more.’
‘You’ve moved?’
He didn’t ask where or why, but, driving where she told him to, changed the subject.
‘What do you do with yourself?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Do you get out much? I mean to discos or pubs and such. You used to like your nights out.’
‘Oh, yes. I’m not missing out on anything.’
‘Aren’t you?’ This time as he twisted his head his look had in it more than idle curiosity.
‘Watch the road.’
But it was there, in his mind, uppermost, unavoidable now, what he had wondered only moments after he’d met her, when he noticed that new and appealing fleshing out of arms and breasts. Who had she been with since they parted? How many? How often? Because he remembered how it had been with her, especially when she was at her best: soft, receptive, then mountingly demanding as giving joined with taking, after those laughing evenings round at the pub, and half a dozen martinis topped off with maybe a brandy and Babycham.
‘I’ve been going to evening classes,’ she said all at once.
‘Evening classes? What to learn?’
‘Conversational Italian.’
‘What for?’
‘I went on holiday to Italy, with a friend.’
‘A friend?’
‘A pal. I thought it would be nice to know a bit of the language for when I went again.’
‘You liked it, did you?’
‘Yes. All that sunshine. All them old buildings.’
‘All them cheeky fellers.’
‘Oh, they’re all right. They reminded me of you.’
‘How’s that?’
‘They’re full of themselves. They think they can pull women like picking apples off a tree. Especially foreign women, on their own.’
‘They specially fancy blonde women, an’ all, I’ve heard.’
‘Oh, yes. They’re not above pinching your bottom to show it.’
‘Cheeky bastards. Are they any good when it comes to the crunch?’
‘What do you mean?’ She asked, though she knew very well.
‘I mean in bed.’
‘You’ll have to ask somebody else about that.’
‘Will I?’
‘I don’t go abroad to get laid by somebody I’ve never seen before and won’t see again.’
‘You can get that at home.’
‘I can get what I want at home and leave alone what I don’t want.’
‘Let’s hear you say something in Italian, then.’
‘Vada tutto diritto.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Go straight on.’
‘Hey, that sounds real!’
‘Prendo la prima a destra,’ she said after a moment. ‘Take the first on the right.’
From the road by the complex of six-storey flats there was a view into the valley, and the estate where they had lived together.
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Six months. I swapped a three-bedroomed house for a one-bedroomed flat. There seemed more sense in it.’
‘You didn’t fancy going home to your mother?’
‘Oh, no, I value my independence. What’s your place like?’
‘A two-bedroomed modernised terrace house.’
‘Are you buying it?’
‘It’s hers.’
‘She must be the thrifty type.’
‘An aunty left it to her. But she’s a good manager.’
‘Lucky for you.’ She spoke again with one hand on the door catch as he reached for the ignition key. ‘You’ve no need to switch off, ’cos you’re not coming in.’
‘Did I say I wanted to?’
‘Well, that’s all right, then, because you’re not. La visita e finita.’
‘You mean you can’t even thoil me a cup of tea, for old time’s sake?’
‘Not even a cup of tea. Your wife’ll be waiting for you.’
‘Oh, she goes out shopping with her mother Saturday afternoons.’
‘Well then, you can go and be getting the tea re
ady for when she comes in.’
‘You know,’ he said, ‘just because we couldn’t hit it off living together doesn’t mean we can’t be friendly.’
‘I haven’t tried to scratch your eyes out, have I? I should say that’s friendly enough, considering.’
His sigh was loud. ‘We had some good times at the beginning.’
‘And some bad times at the end.’
‘It’s a pity, though, when you think about it.’
‘Look,’ she said, ‘we agreed to differ. We parted. I’ve picked up the pieces. You’re married to somebody else. So what’s your game? What are you after now?’
‘There’s no game. I’m only trying to be mates.’
‘On your bike,’ she said. ‘On your bike, Des, lad.’
She opened the door, got out, left him, walking to the building without looking back. The lift doors were closing on someone else as she entered the vestibule, so she walked up the two flights to her flat. There she unlocked her door, put her bags in the kitchen and then, before unpacking them, walked into the living-room and to the window which looked out onto the road. The car was still there and he was out with his head under the bonnet again. In his brilliantly white newly laundered shirt of the type he always liked to wear in his leisure hours, sleeves turned back, three buttons open at his chest, impervious to the chill in the day, he looked like someone meant for a warmer climate, and he reminded her once more of the Italian men and the saunter of their lightly clad bodies, at expansive ease in sun and air. Then, as though he were acting out the part for her benefit, he stood away from the car with his hands on his buttocks before looking up and, seeing her, spreading his arms in a huge gesture of resignation.
‘Now what’s up?’ she said aloud, as he pointed first to himself, then to her, and began to walk towards the building. ‘Oh God, he’s coming in.’
He was on the landing, trying to get his bearings, when she went to the door.
‘What do you want now?’
‘I’ve sprung a leak,’ he said. ‘I can fix it, but I’ll need a bucket of water to get me home.’
He advanced on her before she could speak, as though her allowing him in now was the most natural of courtesies and not even worth a request. She thought for a second of stopping him and telling him to wait; then, as he put his hand on her arm and turned her through the doorway, she went without protest.