I shall not attempt to describe the details of my work in the cloth factory. In brief, my labours entailed cutting certain types and colours of cloth to determined lengths, ensuring that they were labelled and packed correctly, and following through each consignment to the despatch point.
Within a week I had memorized all relevant details and from there the work degenerated into a meaningless routine which I acted out for the sole purpose of the money it brought me.
I said to Isobeclass="underline" “I want to talk to you. Come over here for a minute.”
“I want to talk to you too.”
We left Sally by the tents and walked back to where I had been before. We stood facing each other, uncomfortable in each other’s presence. I realized that this was the first time I had been really alone with her for several days, if not weeks. That thought led me to remembering that we had not had intercourse for over three months.
I tried not to look at her.
“Alan, we’ve got to do something,” she said. “We can’t go on like this. I’m terrified of what’s going to happen. We ought to go back to London. It isn’t fair on Sally.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “We can’t go back, we can’t reach Bristol. All we can do is wait.”
“But wait for what?”
“How do I know? Until things settle down again. You know the position as well as I do.”
“Have you thought what this is doing to Sally? Have you looked at her recently? Have you thought about what this is doing to me?”
“I know what it’s doing to all of us.”
“And you do damn-all about it!”
“If you’ve got any positive suggestions . .
“Steal a car from someone. Shoot someone. Do anything, but get us out of this damned field and back to decent living! There must be somewhere we can go. Things would be all right in Bristol. Or we could go back to that camp. I’m sure they’d have us if they saw Sally.”
“What’s wrong with Sally?”
“Nothing you’d ever notice.”
“What do you mean?”
She didn’t answer, but I thought I caught her intention. This was her way of using Sally against me.
I said: “Be reasonable. You can’t expect me to solve everything. There’s nothing I or you can do. If there was, we’d do it.”
“There must be something. We can’t live in a tent in somebody’s field for ever.”
“Look, the country’s in one hell of a state. I don’t know what’s going on, and I doubt if we would if we were in London. There are police on all the main roads, troops in most of the towns. There’re no newspapers and nothing on the radio. All I’m suggesting is that we stay as we are as long as we have to, until things get better. Even if we had a car we probably wouldn’t be allowed to drive it. How long is it since we saw one on the road?”
Isobel burst into tears. I tried to comfort her, but she pushed me away. I stood by her, waiting for her to calm down. I was becoming confused. When I had thought about what I was going to say to her, it had seemed to be so simple.
As she wept, Isobel stepped away from me, shouldering me aside as I tried to pull her back. Across the field I could see Sally staring in our direction.
When Isobel had stopped crying, I said to her: “What do you want most of all?”
“There’s no point in telling you.”
“Yes, there is.”
She shrugged hopelessly. “I think I want us to be as we were before this started.”
“Living in Southgate? With all those rows going on?”
She said: “And you out till all hours of the night, sleeping with some little whore.”
Isobel had known about my affairs for two or more years. She no longer possessed the ability to sting me with them.
“You’d prefer that to this? Would you really? Think about it, will you?”
“I’ve thought about it,” she said.
“And about the rest of the marriage? Would you honestly want any of that back again?” I had already considered the question, knew my own answer to it. Our marriage had finished before it began.
“Anything … rather than this.”
“That’s no answer, Isobel.”
I debated again whether or not to say to her what I had decided. As callous as it seemed to me in the face of her present state of mind, it presented an alternative to a situation we both detested. Though she wanted to retrogress and I was going to move on. Was there, I wondered, any real significance?
“All right,” she said. “How about this? We’ll split up. You go back to London and try to find somewhere for us to live. I’ll take Sally and we’ll try to reach Bristol. We’ll stay there until we hear from you.”
I said at once: “No. Absolutely not. I’m not letting you take Sally. I don’t trust you with her.”
“What do you mean? I’m her mother, aren’t I?”
“That doesn’t embrace every capability.”
For a second or two I saw genuine hatred in Isobel’s face and I looked away. My unfaithfulness to Isobel in the past had been a negative reaction away from her, rather than some distinct movement to someone else in seeking something that she could not provide. It had come about through my inadequacy to confront the reality of our marriage, instead of out of a constructive awareness of some shortcomings in the relationship. Though I knew that our generally unsuccessful sex-life, which had initiated in some psychological difficulty in Isobel, was one of the first causes, it was no longer the whole reason and it was the complexity of our failure that made me unable to deal with it. My own motives were suspect. Thus, in provoking Isobel’s overt hatred, I was rendered discomfited.
She said: “That’s what I want. You’re obviously incapable of supplying an alternative.”
“I do have a suggestion.”
“What is it?”
And so I told her. I said I was taking Sally and that she was to go on to Bristol by herself. I offered her most of our remaining cash and as much equipment as she wanted. When she asked me why I wished to do this, I told her without compromising my earlier conception. I said as bluntly as I could that our marriage as such was over, that the social disruption had only resolved the situation into a more recognizable form. I told her that if she persisted in thinking that we could pick up again she was deluding herself and, in the long run, jeopardizing Sally’s future. The break had been forced on us, but nevertheless it was a natural one. I considered that Sally would be safer with me, and that when things settled down again we could obtain a divorce and Sally would get legal protection.
Isobel just said: “I don’t know,” and walked away.
I examined the rifle at the earliest opportunity and discovered that it was of a sort for which we carried ammunition. Lateef had this, so I was obliged to reveal to him that I had come into possession of a rifle.
Lateef had had the ammunition when I first joined his group, and I had no idea from where it had come.
Speaking to me in private, he told me that he had twelve rounds of ammunition that would suit my rifle, but warned me that it was in the interests of us all to dispose of the weapon at once. When I asked him why, he told me that he had heard that the death-penalty had been invoked for the unlicensed use of firearms.
From what he said, I drew the conclusion that he was envious of my having found the rifle.
I argued the need for protection, that had we been armed earlier we might have been able to protect the women. I made the observation that atrocities against refugees were on the increase, and that there was now no organized force which we could trust.