‘They’re always broke,’ she said.
‘I’ll send twenty pounds for their fares.’
She touched his arm. ‘Let me do it. Judy might prefer it to come from me. I’ll write to her this morning.’
‘We’ll devote a day to looking after them,’ he said.
She was surprised at how quickly their existence had become easy – and said so. The only words she could not speak were those which jumped into her mind too quickly to be crushed back. ‘Make the most of the situation before you go home to George. One day soon, when I tell you, you’ll walk out of the flat in what clothes you have on your back, and set off for Nottingham. You’ll have no option but to do it, to obey, because I’ll know that’s best for you, just as George did when he came down – and still does. You’re not cut out for this life. It’s false. It isn’t you, and never can be. Admit it. Give it up. Get out of it. Who are you to think you can be happy? What right do you think you’ve got to escape your fate? Or even to embrace it? Grow up, and get back to where you belong.’
Uncontrollable orders held themselves in a secret lair and, when least expected, shot venomous barbs to destroy her happiness. Impossible to guard against, not part of anybody else, they came from within, signalled to appear without her knowledge, so that she was helpless with panic at what might be done with no connivance from her.
He didn’t notice. Her mind could be in a state of devastation, but a smile would hide it all.
They stayed in, and cleaned the flat together, and put what he called his ‘archives’ back into their place. At dusk he switched on the lights and drew the living-room curtains. ‘With you I’m happy. My life is changing all the time. It’s enriched by you. But we have to change our lives together. Will you go along with me in that?’
She sorted out what to say from too much that suggested itself. She certainly preferred his questions to her own. His were positive, direct, constructive, and concerned, she knew, only for her good. ‘There’s no proper answer. Is that good enough for you?’
It would have been easy to say ‘yes’, but caution, although she despised it, held her back. To go with someone through their transformation wouldn’t be difficult while you too were changing.
‘It’s all right.’
He didn’t look as if it was, though knew he could expect nothing better. He could no longer cover his nuances of expression, which encouraged her to be frank. ‘I have this terrible voice in me which says I shall go back to George one of these days.’
‘How can I fight that one?’ He winced, knowing that he had to. ‘I will, though. I’ll fight it every possible way. Would you willingly return to the House of Servitude? I came from the same place, and know I couldn’t. We have a common journey to make, to get away from what we have left – in spirit as well as in space and time, and without each other it’s a break we can’t make. Neither of us are out of bondage yet. We’ve left the old places, but haven’t arrived anywhere. We shall, though.’
He was right. She couldn’t go back. Nothing would drive her to self-destruction. But why did she still think it possible? The only safe way was to go forward. ‘I’ve become even more of myself since I met you. I’m an individual again. I can’t say more than that.’
He stood up. There was no need to make promises. They would share the adventure. There was no other way but to live with uncertainty. One day passed, and another took its place. That was enough for him.
As long as she woke up with him she did not care. She received answers even before thinking of questions. She had formerly carried a string of questions like chains that became too heavy to let her move, until she was driven half mad, fixed into a nightmare that nearly killed her.
He went to the refrigerator. It was time for supper. She had never seen a man enjoy his food so much. ‘For most of my life meals came at all hours. You ate when you could. On board you were too stunned to worry, and no plate of food had a name. When on shore you were often too drunk to care. I thought of regular meals as only possible in a reign of freedom and order.’
He held up a bottle of white wine. ‘There’s nothing better than this to help our food down – on April 3rd 5737, or however it can be put.’ He fetched three glasses and a corkscrew. ‘Today we celebrate our release from the state of slavery.’ He held her hands, and they were cold, the knuckles more prominent than his own. His hands were also whiter.
The cork was tough, but he wedged the bottle between his legs and pulled. ‘We only have each other at the moment, but let’s praise God for that. So many people don’t even know they have as much.’
He was trying, and his blatant attempt to capture her so that she could free herself made her happy rather than guilty at her own pusillanimous fears. He was from a different world. You persisted in the face of all opposition, persevered in spite of any discouragement. You didn’t take either yes or no for an answer in case whatever you accepted served only to divert you from the one real path.
The wood was packed stonily hard against the spout of green glass. When he pulled, with hands clenched, the reddish hairs along the back trembled with effort. ‘I’m a bit of a Jonah,’ he said, ‘but fresh from the whale’s belly and full of life. I slept like a stone last night, after we made love. I knew when I woke up that this evening was going to be special, even without looking at the calendar.’
She stroked his wrist for a moment, as if to console him at not being able to get the cork out of the bottle – or perhaps to give a reward in advance for when he succeeded. She didn’t know. It was a gamble as to whether or not he would get the cork out. She looked at his struggle, unable to speak.
His elbow shot back against a chair, and the pain must have stung his bone. Bits of cork went spitting on to the carpet. She expected him to curse at the difficulty, if not the impossibility. ‘We’ll toast and talk,’ he said, ‘and feast our release from useless bondage – if you’ll join me in the celebration.’
He went back to work. It was an engineering problem, as if it were a matter of solving a prime conundrum of Archimedes, an equation of force pitted against the seemingly immovable reinforced by the almost certainly indestructible. Neither was it an uncommon situation, he supposed, given the plastic composition of ersatz corks.
‘Why don’t you take it to the sink and push the cork in?’ she suggested. ‘You won’t lose much of the precious wine.’
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘No half measures. That wouldn’t do at all.’
He put the corkscrew in down the side of the cork instead of through the centre, leaned the bottle at an angle and, using the spout itself as leverage, pulled perpendicularly until, she saw, he was first red and then almost blue in the face.
She laughed, but watched the cork slowly drawn out of its green constriction. When it came free he filled three glasses. He took one to the door of the flat, and she saw that he returned without it. ‘What did you do?’
‘I left it outside for the unexpected guest.’
She smiled at such formal generosity. ‘That’s a funny idea, though a nice one. But who are we hoping will call?’
‘If Elijah passes, he sees the wine, and if he feels inclined, he comes inside.’
‘Is that the custom?’
‘It’s the custom.’
She still wore the coloured headscarf that had protected her hair from dusting and cleaning. The novelty of a party for such reasons as he gave was hard to resist enjoying. ‘I should change into my best clothes, then.’
‘You’re in them already. To our life!’
She drank to life. The wine was icy. Being sweet, it should have been warmer, but its slender cold shaft went down. He tapped off the shells of two boiled eggs and sprinkled them with salt. ‘We must eat, as well.’