She licked icy drizzle from her lips, tasting salt one minute and soot the next. They stood under a tree to finish the cakes. She folded the plastic bag and put it into her pocket. ‘The weather forecast got it wrong.’
Her heel was sore. When a car passed they stood in the wet grass to avoid getting splashed. By the time the first houses came in sight they were soaked. She inwardly raged because she had succumbed to his suggestion that they come up to this hellish place for a walk. He felt her mood, but couldn’t tell whether her cheeks were wet from tears or raindrops. The misery of one became the wretchedness of the other, but he endured it as he knew she had to. The sky always cleared sooner or later.
They stood a few minutes till a bus drew in and drove them back to town. By now she had conquered her anger, and reminded him that they still had to buy food to take home. The shop was about to close but he put his foot inside, and the bald, thin-lipped, dark-complexioned owner demanded to know what they wanted, because didn’t they realize that even a shopkeeper had a wife and children to go home to? He didn’t think they would forgive him if he were late, but since they looked like a couple who were starving he might relight the showcase under the counter and let them see what was there.
He smiled at last. Did they want ham from Poland, pickles from Hungary, pate from Belgium, cheese from France, black bread from Bradford, sausage from Italy, not to mention olives from Greece and honey from Israel? They spent ten pounds and filled two bags, and went down the dark street as if such food would cure the needle-bites of rain deadening their faces.
Her skirt and shirt were saturated. She shivered, laid their coats over a chair in front of a radiator, and never wanted to go out of doors again. Tom drew the curtains, and gave her a half tumblerful of whisky. She poured most of it back into the bottle, not wanting to be wasteful. ‘Nor do I care to get tipsy.’
He drank. ‘Long life!’
She swallowed the remainder as if it were water.
In the bathroom she turned on the hot tap, and took off her underclothes. Chilblains ached her feet, and gooseflesh showed at the midriff. She found his aunt’s dressing-gown in a cupboard and put it over her damp skin. From the bottles she took a container of bath salts. Steam coated the mirrors and gave a layer of warmth. She carried his dressing-gown from the bedroom. ‘You’ll get your death of cold if you don’t use this.’
He sat down to resume his reading of yesterday. ‘I will, in a moment.’
‘You’ll be no good with pneumonia.’
The heat was painful, her legs and torso turning pink as she let herself into the water. She soaked, adrift in the heat, then soaped herself, mulling on this strange existence in which every day was as long as a month. Tom seemed weird, not because she had met him so recently, or because he was ten years older, but because he had never been through the defining process of marriage. She didn’t know what exactly to expect from him. She hardly knew what to expect from herself. In many ways he was like a youth of eighteen, but with the worldly experience of his proper age, a discrepancy which put her on her guard when she felt herself succumbing too readily to its attractions. She tried not to let such wariness disturb her, because she similarly felt herself to be a young woman again, backed by the protection of her past marriage and middling age.
They were fresh territory for each other, perilous only in that they clung without realizing they did so. What his advantages gave to her she was able to hand back to him, and as long as he knew it, and she sensed that he did, she didn’t feel herself lacking in spirit. She felt easy whenever he was physically close, but out of his sight she was assailed by an embarrassment which would not leave her until she properly knew him. In his presence it did not matter, but she wanted to feel free of such thoughts when away from him.
Nothing mattered. Equality had to be continually considered and, if necessary, untiringly fought for. It was like being sixteen again and meeting someone of the same age for the second time. You worried because you were still too young to know any better. She was surprised at herself. But her thoughts were her own, childish as they might be, and she would deny none. She saw him smiling at her through the steam, but was too drowsy to respond. He put a cup of lemon tea on the broad edge. Wash my back, she wanted to say. He took up the soap, and his smooth hands made her feel large as he wielded the sponge around her. ‘Why don’t you take off your dressing-gown and get in?’
It was a suggestion she had never made before, but she thought there was no point in not occasionally capitulating to whatever came into her mind, and pandering to what the body needed.
In laying the table and setting out food, he still lived alone, inviting her to share whatever he did for himself. At the moment there was no other way. She was glad, and drank the wine he poured. He had swilled the glass, and not dried it properly. A drop of water hung on the outside like a tear, which she pressed away with her fingertip. Perhaps we will stay this way for ever, each mind our own and never to meet, he with his thoughts, me with mine and wondering what his are. But he spoke, whether she could or not, as if he had been brought up to believe that it was impolite not to fill in the silence with conversation.
‘The world doesn’t want us unless we contribute,’ he replied, when she asked if this was so, ‘and I suppose that’s quite right. In company, people like to hear about your work and what you’ve done in your life, or what you intend to do. They’re interested in what you think, and in the places you’ve been to, and any amusing stories attached to them. It all comes out of your work. As long as you have a purpose or an aim in life, you can justify yourself.’
Perhaps the director of the orphanage, or some passing notable who had given the children a lecture, had instilled examples of how to get on in the wide world. Otherwise how could he have known? ‘My grandfather must have been certain that the place would set certain standards,’ he said.
They talked, and finished the bottle of wine. ‘I feel deficient at the thought of your adventurous life. I worked in an office before I was married, though I helped my husband with his business affairs afterwards.’
We’ll go on travels to other places, he wanted to say, but felt it was not the time. She would rightly suspect him of wanting to ensnare her. There’ll be plenty of adventures one day, he would add, though I don’t yet know exactly where. She saw it in his candid and affectionate stare, till she laughed for no reason and turned away.
Talking was easy. Everything was easy for him because he knew how to make it so. With all the inhibitions that might have been created by his upbringing he was not afraid to say what was in his mind. He suggested that this might be because those who had lived alone never found it difficult to chatter away. Not that he minded releasing his thoughts, for what they were worth. All his life he had, as you might say, been a man of action, albeit with little enough for long stretches, and such an occupation had certainly made space for reflection to enter.
They were closer together when they talked than when they made love, but after supper it seemed natural that they should go to bed without discussing the matter. When they were so tired that they could no longer stay awake she walked into the bedroom, and heard him switching out the living-room lights behind her. She lay in bed with her arms around him, listening to the sea’s roar between traffic noises.
7
She said to herself: yes, I want; and: no, I don’t want. So eventually she wanted, and said yes because she hoped to grow through another zone of understanding. You’ll get nowhere sitting in your own room while your life rots like a dead bulb in a flowerpot. She said yes, and could only marvel, full of curiosity at his gladness when he heard her decision to stay with him.