She was convinced that his parents were shopkeepers, and learned later that she was right. ‘Somebody’s got to sell things,’ she said, ‘otherwise people wouldn’t be able to buy, would they?’
‘In my opinion,’ he said earnestly, as if his very soul were weeping for it to come about, ‘we should live in a utopian society where people wouldn’t buy, but earn.’
She shuddered. ‘But they’d earn money, and then they’d have to buy.’
He took the bowl of sugar from the next table, and began to scoop it up. ‘Only those who toiled would earn. It’ll take me a long time to explain it properly to you, and I only teach women who go to bed with me.’
‘Do you teach men in the same way?’
He looked more disturbed than when she had mentioned calling the police. ‘In any case,’ she said, ‘when did you last toil in a factory, or a coal mine?’
‘I’m beginning to like you. I’m hitching back to Southampton. Want to come?’
It was easier getting lifts with a girl. ‘I bloody don’t.’
‘Suit yourself. I’ll be back this way in a month.’
‘Don’t call at the shop.’
‘I’m bound to. I love books so much I have to steal ’em. And I’ve taken a fancy to you.’
She lost her job. But he was loyal. When she got pregnant he married her, after her parents promised to spend five hundred pounds on the wedding and give them, which turned out to mean him, another thousand to get started.
It was a hell she would never delve into again. The planet hadn’t been big enough for both of them. She’d tried to poison him, but had made a mistake in the dosage. I dined out somewhere yesterday, he said to the doctor, and must have eaten something bad. I was too drunk to know where the place was. He had tried to murder her. She had a six-inch scar on the shoulder to show where he had missed. I fell down the steps outside the house and cut myself on the foot-scraper. He was a savage bed-sitter terrorist who gave her no peace because she was the nearest victim, but who modified his depredations after she had broken an earthenware pot over his head. The out-patients’ department at the hospital had known her well. During every separate minute she had felt she was living for ever. Now that such torment had long been over she still didn’t know who or what she was, but that uncertain condition was by now established as her true self, and accepted with enough equanimity for her existence to be tolerable, sufficiently enjoyable for her to know she would never gas herself as the peacefully sleeping Pam had done.
The struggle to stay alive generated the energy to keep going. Fighting against all hostilities created a pressure that did not allow her to contemplate such a way out. She reasoned, and became less despondent. With her free hand she wiped an eye that had become momentarily wet, and happiness at being alive caused her to squeeze the hand she was holding.
Pam woke.
‘Feeling better?’
She closed her eyes and lay back. Nothing to get up for.
‘You had a good sleep.’ Judy’s hand was held firm when she tried to draw it away. Her fingers opened in her anguish on seeing the mark of the wedding ring.
The room was as if shielded by grey blankets. ‘I can’t see anything. Put the light on.’
Judy smiled. ‘I will if you let go of my hand.’ There was an aroma of sweat and fear. He had bundled her into bed with her clothes on, but couldn’t have done otherwise, being the gentleman he was. ‘You should get undressed if you’re going to stay in bed. Be more comfortable.’
The light made the room dull orange rather than grey. ‘If I do I’ll never get up. I’ve got to phone my husband.’
She’d sent a letter saying what she intended to do, so he’d hot-foot it down and drag her back to the bijou den for a kitchen leucotomy. She looked for an unposted envelope, or screw of paper. ‘Why do that?’
‘I don’t know.’ Nothing to hold. ‘What else is there?’
‘Did you tell anybody beforehand?’
She sat up, and turned her head slowly. ‘I must stand.’
Judy held her. ‘All right?’
The world was empty. ‘I did it without thinking. I can’t trust myself.’
Judy laughed. ‘Who of us can?’ She came from the window. ‘If you get some work, and mix with people, you won’t do it again. There’s no point running back to hubby now that the worst is over.’
‘Perhaps she does want to go back to him.’ The door had opened too quietly to be heard through her talk. She was meddling dangerously, Tom thought, though considered it best not to say anything further on the matter. He expected a raging come-back, but Judy was like the weather, in that what you anticipated didn’t always manifest.
‘It’s up to her,’ was all she said.
He was wet from the rain. ‘How are you?’ he asked Pam.
‘All right.’ She was morose – or she couldn’t recognize him. He had seen people close to death, and she didn’t look far off. But he felt an interest in her, though could ask no questions while she was still in the storm. He was repelled by what she had tried to do, and kept his thoughts clear in order not to condemn. Yet he had entered into her offence by doing what he could to save her. She had been caught by a death-dealing wave, and he had interfered with her fate by stopping it in mid-twist. On your own head be it, he told himself, but he didn’t want to let her out of his sight in case another stray wave took her under.
‘I bought food,’ he said. ‘After I get rid of these wet clothes why don’t you both come next door and have some lunch?’
Pam felt she never wanted to eat again; and Judy said: ‘I must go out and do my own shopping.’
He stood, tense and uncertain. ‘I have a screwdriver next door, and some bigger screws. I’ll fix the latch back on, that I snapped in my hurry to get in.’ There was no answer. He stayed a little longer so as not to leave too abruptly. ‘Anyway, the food will be next door, if you care for it.’ He expected no response, but heard Pam say, as he turned to go, that she would wash and change first.
She remembered a struggle, but couldn’t recall what had happened beyond his cruelty at pulling her out of a warm sleep that ought to have lasted for ever. She had seen his face at a time too far off to remember who he was. She had been drawn from that dream by a long scalding ache. This same man had stopped her going even further back into her childhood dream. In bringing her cold skin into more contact with daylight he had crushed the dream for ever, yet wakened her at the same time.
Some force to touch was missing at the end of her fingers, and her mind raced through thoughts like a millwheel in space. Memories created even thinner air. Nothing inside or out had substance. She looked around the room in the hope of seeing some solid attachment that would tell her where she was.
She shook her head angrily, crushing back fraudulent tears till they seemed to burn her brain. The day was unlike any other, an island unto itself.
She took off her blouse and threw cold water on her face, over and over again, like an unstoppable machine. Judy was frightened that she would never stop unless her arms were pinned back, and pushed a towel roughly towards her: ‘Use this.’
Pam rubbed her face too hard for her skin to stay pale. She would erase all features. Nobody would recognize her, not even herself, no matter how clear the mirror. Having woken out of life’s worst dream she did not know what part of her existence to get back to.
Judy held her till she became still, and hardly breathing, as if she had gone to sleep while on her feet. There was a tinderish heat about her, not humid and animal, but a temperature the body provided to keep her inner warmth unsullied by cold from outside.