The end of his letter (‘I’ll start looking for a place for us to live tomorrow. It could be anywhere between Dan and Ophira, and from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan. I’ll hire a car and reconnoitre’) had been followed by one in which he said that he had found a flat for the time being in Jerusalem, and wanted her and Rachel to join him as soon as she felt they were able to make the move. He could come and get her if she liked, and they would make the trip by plane. He’d see that Judy and the kids were all right, unless, he added, they would like to come as well! Even that could be done.
‘The pair of you certainly seem to have got all that was possible out of each other,’ Judy remarked, ‘considering how it looks like ending up.’
‘Nothing is ended yet, that’s the joy of it. I hate to think of endings.’
‘Yes,’ Judy said, ‘I suppose beginnings are more in your line. But you will go, won’t you?’
She leaned, and filled her cup. ‘What would you do, if you were in my place?’
‘I’m not, and never would be, thank you very much. But if I had the chance, you mean?’ Her voice quavered, and broke. ‘Well, I don’t know. I love you too much to want you to go. You shouldn’t ask questions like that.’
It was unfair, Pam saw. There was too much pressure between them. She complimented her on her honesty. ‘Do you want a brandy in your coffee?’
Judy noted how affectionately they cared for one another, and how soon it was to end. ‘Sorry, whisky.’
She went to get it.
‘But I mean’ – Pam poured it into both cups – ‘I’m asking what you would do in my place – exactly that.’
‘You’ve made the bloody coffee cold,’ Judy said. ‘We have as near a perfect life as I can imagine at the moment. Trust a man to ruin it.’
‘He made it possible.’
‘Damn him!’
They were silent, Pam hardly able to look at Judy who gazed intently at her.
‘I’d go,’ Judy said. ‘That’s what I’d do. But don’t let me influence you, for God’s sake!’
‘I won’t,’ Pam said. ‘But I suppose I shall go.’
‘“Suppose!”’ She saw some hope. Then the light went out of her eyes, because any uncertainty from Pam only brought a certainty closer. Seven negatives made a positive. She poured more whisky. Close to crying, you must laugh. ‘Shall you dip Rachel in the Jordan?’
‘I doubt it. Whether I’ll stay in Israel or not, I can’t say. Depends on a lot. I’m too free a person to commit myself, though I suppose that, too, is an illusion. In one way I’m frightened, but on the other hand, to go to Tom in Israel is something I can’t not do. Not to try it would be cowardice. Since we met I’ve really given him a hard time. I can’t imagine how anybody but Tom would have put up with it. There’ll be no more of that, though, from now on.’
Judy sat at her feet, and put her arms around her legs. ‘If you go, it’ll be for ever. I know.’
‘That’s being melodramatic. Nothing’s for ever.’
‘Maybe not. But I know you, absolutely. You’ll go, and you’ll stay, even though you may well come back now and again to say hello to old Judy.’ She looked tired, as if she would feel a weight off her when there were no more decisions to be talked about. ‘It’s front-line stuff out there. You know that, don’t you?’
‘It’s where I want to be, though. There’s no other place.’
‘No, I see that. Not for you there isn’t.’
‘I’ll begin arrangements to move in the morning. I see no use in holding back once my mind’s made up.’ She smiled. ‘There are certain things you have to do, and you’d never make any beginnings if you couldn’t act until you were able to see the end.’
She spoke without much consideration. Life seemed empty, but the weariness was finished, and she could only gird herself for the future. ‘After all, it’s my victory as well as his. And the fact is, there’s no such thing as a victory, unless you have someone else to share it with.’
A Biography of Alan Sillitoe by Ruth Fainlight
Not many of the “Angry Young Men” (a label Alan Sillitoe vigorously rejected but which nonetheless clung to him until the end of his life), could boast of having failed the eleven plus exam not only once, but twice. From early childhood Alan yearned for every sort of knowledge about the world: history, geography, cosmology, biology, topography, and mathematics; to read the best novels and poetry; and learn all the languages, from Classical Greek and Latin to every tongue of modern Europe. But his violent father was illiterate, his mother barely able to read the popular press and when necessary write a simple letter, and he was so cut off from any sort of cultivated environment that, at about the age of ten, trying to teach himself French (unaware books existed that might have helped him), the only method he could devise was to look up each word of a French sentence in a small pocket dictionary. It did not take long for him to realize that something was wrong with his system, but there was no one to ask what he should do instead.
So, like all his schoolmates, he left school at fourteen and went to work in a local factory. Alan never presented himself as a misunderstood sensitive being, and always insisted that he had a wonderful time chasing girls and going with workmates to the lively Nottingham pubs. He also joined the Air Training Corps (ATC) where he absorbed information so quickly that by the age of seventeen he was working as an air traffic controller at a nearby airfield. World War II was still being fought, and his ambition was to become a pilot and go to the Far East, but before that could be realized it was VE Day. As soon as possible he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. It was too late to become a pilot or a navigator, but he got as far as Malaya, where as a radio operator he spent long nights in a hut at the edge of the jungle.
The Morse code he learned during this time stayed with Alan all his life; he loved listening to transmissions from liners and cargo ships (although he never transmitted himself), and whenever invited to speak, he always took his Morse key along. Before beginning his talk, he would make a grand performance of setting it up on the table in front of him and then announce that if anyone in the audience could decipher the message he was about to transmit, he would give that person a signed copy of one of his books. As far as I remember, this never happened.
In Malaya, Alan caught tuberculosis — only discovered during the final physical examination before demobilization. He spent the next eighteen months in a military sanatorium, and was awarded a 100 percent disability pension. By then Alan was twenty-three years old, and it was not long until we met. We fell in love and soon decided to leave the country, going first to France and then to Mallorca, and stayed away from England for more than six years. That pension was our only reliable income until, after several rejections, the manuscript of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was accepted for publication. Afterward, Alan would say that during those apprentice years he had been kept by a very kind woman: the Queen of England.
It is said that an artist must choose between life and art; sometimes Alan would tell whomever questioned him that after his first book was published and he became a recognized writer, he stopped living — there was not enough time to do both. I hope that was not entirely true. But writing was his main activity: He would spend ten to twelve hours a day at his desk, reading or answering letters when he needed a break from working on his current novel. And there were poems, essays, reviews — and scripts for the films of his first two books, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, and later others. He was extremely productive. But certainly he also enjoyed social life with our friends and going to concerts or the theatre. This was the heyday of the young British dramatists at the Royal Court Theatre.