‘I can’t stand this life any longer,’ Nancy said, pausing in her needlework.
He looked up.
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘I want a home of my own, that’s what’s wrong with it. I don’t like living on top of other people.’ She was knitting a jumper for Simon, having bought a Fair Isle pattern from the store in the village, one of those fly-blown pamphlets paled by the sun that you see all over the country, with an illustration of a kid-on the envelope already wearing it, the sort of smiling nipper that never was except in Nancy’s mind.
‘I want to live in private, not public,’ she said. ‘Nor in a caravan, either. It’s like when I was a girl and lived in a slummy street, everybody sitting on their door-steps and shouting across to everybody else. I was glad when we went to the housing estate.’
‘You can’t compare this to a slum.’
The clicking needles showed off her mood. As if he needed them! She had a lot to say, and didn’t relish the fact that he was making her say it. He was sly as well as idle these days, and such people can’t love. ‘Perhaps not. But I’d like us to be more on our own.’
‘I wouldn’t want to,’ he said. ‘This is a good way to live.’
‘Where does that bleddy leave me, then?’ she demanded.
‘If we can’t agree, there’s not much point in things.’
‘If you’d agree with me,’ she answered, ‘we’d be all right. Depends which way you look at it, don’t it?’
‘I expect it does.’
She was not prepared for it to stay like that, though she didn’t doubt he would have been. ‘I’m going back to Nottingham, then.’
‘Oh ye’? Gonna get rooms?’
‘Not bleddy likely. I kept the house on.’
He hadn’t known about that. ‘You just came down for a holiday, like?’
They sat at the table, with a pot of tea between them — which he had made. ‘I’ve got two kids to think about, and I know I can’t rely on you to do anything. You’ve been back months and you haven’t even got a job yet.’
‘It’s not so important.’
‘It is for me,’ she said.
‘There’s plenty of others to sweat in factories. I’ve done my share.’
‘Twelve years isn’t a fair share. And where’s the money going to come from?’
He saw the lines already at her mouth, the hard-bitch determination to do nothing that wasn’t approved of in TV adverts and the Daily Retch. To her there was nought else to do but the done thing, to knuckle under and get back to it and pull your weight and feed the hungry mouths in the handpainted nest — mostly for the benefit of bastards who’d faint at the smell of an oil-rag, or who couldn’t even mend a fuse. He felt an ugly mood in him, and held it back. ‘Are you short of money? I’ll solve that problem if you are.’
‘You wouldn’t have talked like that in the old days,’ she shrugged. He’d be an old man if he stayed here much longer, doing something he was never cut out for. But he was shifting and unreliable. He’d left her once, and would do it again, so she might as well get it in first.
‘Times change,’ he said.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well I change, then.’
He’d done the wrong thing going to see her in Nottingham after coming back. He couldn’t think why he’d done it now, except out of curiosity, and a wish to look at the children. But it was a useless waste, because even if they’d missed him they were used to him having vanished by then. Such a thoughtless return had ruined everything, and now it was being done again — by Nancy this time — so he had to do his bit and not make it look too easy: ‘Can’t you stick with things for a while? What about all the love you told me you had?’
He wouldn’t have said that a year ago, either. He felt a wave of self-dislike, yet at the same time knew he hadn’t come back from Algeria to get caught in this.
‘Maybe it’s gone so deep I can’t get to it,’ she said. ‘But I know what would be best for the kids.’
‘They’re happy here.’
They were, too.
‘They’ll be happier in Nottingham, even though I’ll have to go to work. It’ll be more real for them up there.’
More real! Good God! Wasn’t it real everywhere? But there was no moving her. Nor did he want to, finally. He was aware of being unjust in his indifference, but there was nothing he could do about it. He’d known for weeks it wasn’t working out.
‘I’ll pack tomorrow,’ she said. ‘And if you want to follow on, you can. But don’t leave it too late. Things have a way of altering for good. I’m only thirty, don’t forget.’
‘I won’t go back to work in a factory,’ he said quietly. ‘Not till I’ve tried something else.’
‘What, though?’
‘I’m not sure yet.’
‘Well, you ought to be. You liked the factory at one time. That’s all you know how to do, anyway.’
‘Do you think that’s a good life?’
‘I don’t know. But I’ve worked as a bus conductress, and that wasn’t exactly fun. And I sweated in a stocking factory from fifteen, till I married you. I’ve done my share, and I know I’ll have to go on doing it — all my bloody life.’
So Nancy left. Nobody could persuade her not to, and they all missed her when she went, which made him feel quite bad about it. In fact he didn’t realise how much she and the children meant to him till afterwards.
A final set-to at the station showed that she knew Myra’s son Mark was his child, and that her pride would not let her live so close to them. He couldn’t blame her for it, and it was as clean a way of parting as he could think of. He did wonder though what vile gett had thought fit to tell her. It was strange, he brooded on his way back from the station, how she’d made up his mind for him, instead of it being the other way round.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ralph Spilsby regarded himself as an honourable man, but since marrying Mandy he had lived on his in-laws and earned no money at all. He therefore computed to the best of his ability, being honourable, how much in cash he owed the Handley community, hoping one fine day to pay every shilling back.
The fact that he was in their debt, yet went on living with them, tormented him from time to time, though Handley to his credit did not remind him of it, nor tell him to get a job, any more frequently than he did to a member of his own family. But Ralph kept his calculations, and waited with fierce patience for the day when one of his rich aunts would die and leave him a fortune.
He came to live with the Handleys because he’d married Mandy. But also he valued the priceless silence of the countryside. When even those sounds were pushed into the background, all remaining noises were his own, and in the middle of the day, with the kids at school and Handley in his studio, it was indeed peaceful around the compound. Dawley’s wife Nancy had left the community and taken their two kids, so even that made things quieter.
A calm life to Ralph meant hearing no other noises but his own, for then the silences belonged totally to him. He wanted infinite space and emptiness in all directions, that he could fill with his own speech and movement, shapes and colours. He had an active imagination, and sat alone like a king, quiescent in his benign selfishness, which was his one pure reason for having been born, and the nearest he ever got to real happiness. He thought it was this craving for peace and silence that made him an honourable man.
He got up from his log in the paddock, and talked inwardly with himself while burning yesterday’s paper-rubbish from the house. Maricarmen came through the gate. ‘I thought everyone was taking a nap,’ she said.