She took some dry flaky biscuit, and a spring onion. It was good with the wine. His brown eyes glowed. She didn’t know why he was so happy, but smiled and felt glad to be alive with him. ‘I will,’ she said, ‘and then I’m going to change my clothes. I hope this celebration includes that activity.’
He sat down in the armchair, legs crossed as he looked at her. ‘Anything you say. We’re out of servitude.’
With food spread, they came to the table, a solitary candle lit. He was right. Some line had to be crossed, so much left behind. His celebration defined it, a festival to make and mark a new beginning. ‘It’s a feast for family, group, tribe, nation, or for the whole world if ever it became so enlightened. My grandmother would have approved. It’s quite possible that yours would, though it lacks the finer points. But it’s all we can do at the moment. It affirms our getting out of slavery, and living properly with each other. Most people live in self-imposed servitude, or in the slavery they allow those nearest to impose on them. They feel comfortable in the House of Bondage, and don’t want to come out and face the terrors of the unknown, which to them is the strongest barrier there is. But it’s really the Great Knowing, because when you step into it the fetters fall away. We can find love, respect, work, adventure, and we can thank God for giving us the Jerusalem of the spirit, and the Israel of our strength and consciousness. I say this out of love for you, and love for myself. You look back on servitude and think it was a safe and orderly life, and imagine that the way you’re living now has no future, but in servitude the future was blank and the certainty dead, otherwise your suffering spirit wouldn’t have brought you to me, who wants you by me for as long as we live.’
She was afraid of his weird outpouring on an evening that was not like any other. The only time she was unafraid was when he lay between her legs and buried deeply in, his hands under her buttocks and her recalcitrant orgasm building up almost against her will and she thought she wouldn’t come though was dying to, and sometimes she didn’t but at other times she decided not to care and then it rose within her and she clutched him, out of control and as far in love as she thought it possible to be.
Thank God he had stopped talking. She couldn’t stand it. She liked him. She loved him. She looked at him. If only he would fuck her, and not talk. She was ashamed at such a thought, and felt herself flushing in a torment of self-reproach. Every day he was different. She didn’t know him. Then she looked, and for a few moments knew him better than she knew herself, which made her despise herself, then feel sorry for herself, then love herself more than she ever had, then wonder who she was and where she was, till she finally grew calm in the exhaustion which followed, then held his hands and pressed them, and looked at him for minutes that seemed like years, while she fought back tears whose significance she did not want to know.
‘When I came up the stairs a few weeks ago and saw the danger you were in from your husband and his brothers,’ he said, ‘I felt that the Angel of Death was close. I reverted immediately to the raging bull, and would have killed to get you free. But I felt the Angel of Death pass over us, and was able to do what I could which, thank God, turned out to be sufficient. Both of us were blessed at that moment, by being released. When we came down here, I knew that we had left our troubles and started our wanderings together.’
‘We haven’t come far, my darling.’
He poured more wine. ‘We’ll leave the country soon.’
‘I’ll be seasick!’
‘Haven’t you ever been on a ship?’
‘When I went to Spain, I flew.’
‘With me you’ll go by boat.’
She sat stiffly. ‘And if I want to go by air?’
‘Don’t you want a new experience?’ he laughed.
‘Depends where we go.’
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘I can’t think of tomorrow, let alone next week, or next month. Do you mind?’
‘We’ll stay a bit longer, then.’ He lifted his glass: ‘To those beautiful blue and oblique eyes of a queen! – and to all else about you.’
She sipped, then had an impulse to embrace him, but didn’t. She held back, not knowing why. For no reason – not wanting to make things too easy for him, but most of all not easy for herself. Everything was wonderful, but it didn’t seem right. She was happy, yet felt oppressed. The weight was impossible to bear. She felt as if she belonged to the world, and was no longer afraid, but the very idea of fearlessness frightened her. She wanted to go to bed, yet wanted to walk in the streets with him. She wanted to go to Nottingham and sort things out with George before coming back here for good. She wanted to do nothing but what she was doing, which was rushing to his arms and kissing him with a passion that burned them both.
He pushed the headscarf back, and moved from her lips to kiss the damp skin and hair that had been covered by the headscarf since before dusk.
13
The sea rose like a hillside when she looked back. Bitter cold had teeth, wind trying to eat the empty streets, so the parking space at the station was empty. They had bought a car. Choose a colour, he said. She nodded at white, a serviceable estate model for five thousand pounds. We’ll go a long way, as long as there’s petrol. She was almost afraid to step into it, wanted to put newspaper down for when there was rain.
A door banged open against the carriage before the train had properly stopped. Sam jumped on to the platform. Hilary was not so daring. A satchel roped to her back, she had the replica machine-gun which nearly pulled her arms to the concrete, as if she had to pick up a golden coin before running to the barrier. A dark young man flinched, and walked quickly away from her. The ticket collector patted her head and advised her to wait for her ma, but she told him to leave her alone or she would phone the police, then pushed through and went skipping towards the newspaper stall. He shouted: ‘Hey, where’s your ticket?’ He asked Judy as she went through: ‘Are them kids yours?’
She shivered after the heat of the train, and showed him a ticket. ‘They’re bloody not. They’ve been terrorizing everybody all the way down. They should be done away with, the little bastards.’ She pointed to an elderly woman in furs coming along the platform, a chauffeur carrying her luggage. ‘I expect they belong to her.’
‘I’m glad you were able to come,’ Tom said.
‘I’d have taken any chance of a trip to Brighton.’ She looked full of cares, but her eyes smouldered with haughtiness and resentment. A mischievousness about the shape of her mouth set her apart, and might warn anyone to keep out of her way. She wore slacks, and a three-quarter coat. Pam thought she looked more mannish than when they had last met. ‘I don’t see why I should pay anything for those two little drag-bags. They’re going to enjoy it too much to have their fares paid as well. They ran in at Victoria, and ran out here. If a collector gets on the train going back, they can jump off and thumb a ride home. Got to learn what life’s all about. When it happened before, they came home in a police car. They’d been given tea and cakes, a mouth-organ and a doll. I clouted them as they came in the door, and told them not to get lost again – even though it had taken some initiative. I nearly died of worry, I said. I’m not sure whether the copper was convinced, but for the next few days they were threatening to leave me and go and live at the police station.’ She turned, shouting in a voice which, Pam thought, must have carried for miles: ‘Come back here, or I’ll tear your goldens off!’