He telephoned a garage and hired a car. ‘I have a lot of luggage to bring from town, but we should get everything out in one go.’
A fat young man with pale woolly hair parked the hire-car on a yellow line and, when giving him the keys, said he had better not delay driving away or a warden would do him with a fine. The blaring radio stopped Tom hearing what was said. The young man hadn’t turned it off because who in this age would want to be deprived of its frantic jingle? When Tom reached in and stopped it the young man looked with half a smile and half a jeer, as if he had expected a tip but now thought he wouldn’t get one.
Tom signed a paper, and gave him a pound.
‘Cheers, Captain!’ Another car waited on the corner to save him walking back to his garage up the road.
Pam came down. ‘The flat’s locked up.’
He turned northwards from Worthing, intending to cut into London from the south-west. She had watched him map his route by compass directions instead of road numbers and the names of towns. Land and water on the earth were reversed. All around England was land, which he knew like the back of his hand, while England itself was a sea he could steer a boat across, in spite of it being filled with rocks, wrecks, shoals and reefs – in the guise of islands, towns, villages and woods.
‘We’ll be on the road all day,’ he grumbled, six cars nose-to-tail in front. The way was narrow and twisting, part bordered by a brick wall and high hedges, as if they were in the bottom of a drained canal. Then one of the cars forked left, the leader stopped for petrol at the next pump, another turned off, one broke down with smoke coming out of its bonnet by the fistful, a Rover overtook the car in front on a straight bit at last, leaving only a final slowcoach which Tom, slotting down to third, drove immediately beyond into clear road. You were eternally blocked by a convoy, and then all opposition melted away! You were free, and at last could do more than forty, except that it would be incautious due to ice on bends and mist that hung from trees in unexpected places. A BMW came up on the starboard bow and shot by on a bend, splattering his windscreen with muddy water. He hadn’t driven for months. ‘I’d feel much safer in a rough old sea.’
She felt secure. He was competent. They were going along the road together, which was all that mattered. She had said yes, and there was no way out. A no could always be made a yes, but a yes was more difficult to alter, in this case because she wasn’t entirely sure what she had said yes to. A well-defined yes by clause and contract could not possibly have been as final. What made it so binding was that she was content with her choice.
Little time had been necessary to agree, and he had made it easy by not mentioning advantages. If there were any, they were unimportant. It was the disadvantages that influenced her. She would no longer have her own room, losing everything she had come to value. She was surrendering, as if that much-desired state had cost her nothing, had gone against all that she had thought best for herself, as if it was her nature to do so.
People with the best intentions would have said she ought never to have left her husband, and they might have been right. She could have said it was foolish to give up her freedom now, but sometimes you had to go counter to your best interests if you wanted movement in your life. Any explanation for her decision was better than that which said she was doing it because she loved him.
It was impossible to tell whether day glowed or night shone. Dull cloud came almost to ground level, and what scared him stiff, he said, as much as he had ever been scared in his life, were those little dark cars coloured like the sky or road which, with only the dimmest of side-lights, seemed to appear out of the mist when he was half-way through an overtaking manoeuvre. Their murderous drivers are so stupid, stingy, or just consumed by the killer instinct with their lights so low, that you would think they were saving money on the slot meter they’d installed for economy’s sake in case they should wear out their bulbs or batteries too quickly. It was as if they had been on a criminal job, and were sneaking home hoping not to be seen, lacking the imagination to realize that they weren’t the only people on the road. They were living in that pristine state of unconsciousness which no amount of persuasion could take from them.
She laughed at his fulminations, but he thanked God for his survival when they crossed Hammersmith Bridge and were threading the last mile of traffic before landfall.
The façade of the house was uneven. Cement had fallen from cracked places, and Pam wondered how much longer it would stay aloft. A note on the shelf inside the hall said: ‘I have a letter for you – Judy.’ When Tom went upstairs, Pam knocked on the door opposite, and heard a shout for her to come in.
The fat-smoke of frying sausages thickened the air. Judy shuffled them in the pan with a spatula and stirred a saucepan of beans with a wooden spoon. Hilary and Sam sat at the table. Judy turned: ‘Back from your honeymoon?’
She smiled. ‘Is that what you call it?’
‘I’ll give you some tea if you sit down. Where’s lover-boy? Sam, open that drawer and get Mrs Hargreaves’ letter, will you?’ She scooped stuff onto three plates, and set them on the table.
‘Can’t find it,’ Sam said.
She pulled him away. ‘Incompetent bloody male! Get your tea, then, and let me look.’
‘You bollocks,’ Sam said, flinching. ‘You’re always on at me, especially when somebody else is in the room.’
He wants a father, but Pam daren’t say it aloud. ‘I’ll come down later. It can’t be that vital.’
Judy began to eat. ‘We had your husband here after you flitted with Tom. He came twice, in fact, then left the letter with me before going back up to Nottingham.’
‘He gave me a pound note for sweets,’ Sam shouted. ‘I like him.’
‘I’m not surprised you packed him in.’ Judy carved bread. ‘I hope your sailor-bloke’s a bit better. I didn’t like George’s mood when he left.’
She wants to start an argument, Pam thought, but felt sorry for her. A half-way sympathetic man would certainly make her happier than she is now. He would have to be strong to deal with the children, and willing to allow her a girl-friend now and again. She supposed that if by any chance he existed, the possibility of them meeting was a long way this side of nil. She put an arm over her shoulder. ‘It was nice in Brighton. Perhaps you’ll come down some time.’ She and Tom would pay their fares, and entertain them for the day. They’d lay on food, or go to the beach for a picnic.
‘I can’t imagine anybody bothering with a gang like us,’ Judy said wearily. ‘If these two go anywhere nice they take the place apart.’
‘Tom will see they don’t.’
‘We’ll go out with George,’ Sam said. ‘He promised to take us somewhere.’
‘To the Waxworks,’ said Hilary.
Judy brought the saucepan to the table for second helpings. ‘Don’t bank on it.’
‘He gave me a pound note as well.’ Hilary held out her plate. ‘Will he come back soon, mum?’
Judy banged the pan in the middle of the table, and raged: ‘Be quiet, both of you, or I’ll throw you into the street.’
Pam recalled how good George could be with children. Edward had adored him, up to the age when he realized that his father was merely living his own childhood again through him. George made it as perfect a childhood as love and money could, but Edward wanted only to be left alone, presumably, Pam thought, because with George anticipating all his desires he found it impossible to know what kind of person he was likely to grow into.