Her Victory (10 page)

George opened the cab door. ‘Money's tight till I get going in my new premises. I shan't be in the clear till the autumn. Maybe not even then.'

‘I didn't think you would, you mingy bleeder.'

George slammed the door as he leapt down, and was searching for his car keys when Bert's voice came sharply through the loud revving of the engine. He waved something, and George saw his dark blue passport held above a pool of water. ‘You lost this, I think.'

The precious book corkscrewed towards him, hard to catch as Bert's laugh followed its descent. Any attempt to stop it floundering in the muddy grit would be hopeless.

George had never done him harm or wished him ill, and was grieved that his own brother, on bumping against him in the pub, had slipped the passport out of his pocket. He'd done it as a joke, of course, and then given it back, knowing that George wouldn't doubt where it had gone if he didn't, but was still sufficiently ill-natured to make him scrabble for it in the wet.

It was impossible to explain Bert's dislike. George had done nothing to bring it on. Yet Pam, when he told her about the incident, and now looking back on it, assumed that nothing happened without reason except among those who had been born and would die never having any notion as to what reason might be. Reason was alien to George's brothers, except in so far as they could vaguely sniff out its existence in others, whom they then proceeded to despise and despoil.

It might be extremely unreasonable on her part to believe that such people could ever be taught to be reasonable. You were either born with reason or you were not, and she saw this picture of their joint passport thrown into the squalor as the act of a person for whom reason would never have any meaning no matter how determined an attempt was made to convert him to its use.

The only way they could be induced to accept reason was out of fear, which would be worse than leaving them alone, for such a policy would require unremitting effort on the part of those chosen to impose it, who in the process could hardly fail to instil fear into people already accustomed to using reason in their lives.

George's brothers chose not to be reasonable, and Bert resented the status of a passport – which anybody could acquire who wanted to go out of the country. Apart from despising those who considered themselves to be in that category, he feared the submission you had to endure while going through the necessary form-filling. He abominated the authority that granted the privilege of having one.

Some of this may well have gone through Bert's head when he sent the passport zig-zagging at George waiting below, the action of a person who did not know the meaning of ambition and its all-absorbing work. But now that she had left George she was beginning to see that ‘getting on' might not have been such a desirable end in itself, though it was also true that without the individual urge towards self-improvement the world would be a worse place to live in.

George had put himself beyond the range of their pecking order, by marrying someone who did not agree with their ways. They must often have imagined there was still time for her to acquire them – though losing the most vulnerable member of the family when George married out distorted their relationship in such a way that they appeared never to have recovered. In the meantime their hatred was always raging, as if they had been married to each other for decades and not yet found the nerve to climb into bed together.

Whatever the reason, it seemed as if no technique had yet been developed for getting anything from them except the worst. There was no sign of improvement, nor would there be, she supposed, which was just as well because she didn't need to use them as an explanation for her clearing out from George. Perhaps the real reason for leaving had been even more unreasonable than any of his brothers ever knew how to be, but if so she had never done anything in her life that had felt so right.

12

She came out of the hairdresser's with a scarf over her head. Her hair was held in place. The wind could no longer blow it about, even without the scarf. She collected a blouse and skirt from the cleaners, for the more often she changed her clothes the sooner she would know the kind of person she wanted to become, and thereby recognize who she was. She had little enough to wear, so there was no danger of becoming more than one person, though such a thought did not faze her at a time when she didn't particularly want to become anyone at all provided she could recognize herself when she saw her.

Frozen fish was cheap at the supermarket. She bought an orange as well, then bread and a bottle of milk before going back to her room. She could close the door, and no one would be able to come in unless asked. The room was hers. She had no other, and didn't need more than one. The space within its walls and ceiling was enormous when she needed it to be, and also small when raw cold had to be heated by gas and paraffin.

She took off the scarf and walked to the mirror. She didn't know herself, but realized she would have to get used to the face still unwilling to smile back at her. Short hair made her look thinner and harder. She was glad to be different. Maybe even George would have to stare twice before saying hello if they passed on the street.

If she were tired in the morning from having gone late to bed she needn't get up, and if she felt exhausted in the afternoon she could sleep till the onset of darkness which would be transformed by filling the enclosed space with electric light. Short hair, easier to wash than the scrag-ends that George had found ‘womanly', gave her the illusion of making a new start. She was more in charge of herself.

But she was still not so firmly in control that she didn't think of George and his family much of the time, knowing that as long as such memories plagued her so did the danger that she might go with packed cases to St Pancras and take the first train north. The inner conspiracy, worked entirely by herself, could lead only to one end. Nightmare came at her happiest moments, and rendered her null and void by a terror that could spread no further. At its worst she was unable to move. The only way to defeat her impulse was to let all recollections swamp over her, to see them in the mirror, and listen to them day and night till they lost the power to torment her and pull her back.

She was obsessed by George's family because she had separated him from them sufficiently to become his only real support, and now that she had abandoned him he was entirely alone. Another version, not so neat and simple, might say he had never relied on her, nor properly cut himself off from his family, though he had often been more vehement about his intention of doing so than she.

When he told his brothers never to come and see him unless they first telephoned to find out whether or not he was at home, he said it was because Pam wanted it that way. He turned down invitations to go with them to pubs at the weekend because, he said, he didn't think Pam would want to go. He later refused to help them with money because, he said, he agreed with Pam that if you once started lending there would be no end to it.

Often it was not George who detached himself from his family as much as his brothers who, after his offhand treatment, wanted nothing more to do with him. George did not accept this, preferring to believe that Pam had been the prime mover in their separation. But now that she had left him he could say whatever he liked.

There was a time when the three brothers tried to follow George's example and ‘better themselves' by pooling resources to create their own painting and decorating business. After telephoning for an appointment they came to the house, and Alf described to George how he had been a lesson to them in the ways of hard work, and in setting up schemes for making money without being under the heel of a boss. After they had paid back debts, profits would be theirs to share. They created a vision which George admitted could become reality. With their hundred pounds, and two hundred from him, which they hoped that for old times' sake he wouldn't refuse, they would buy a second-hand van, as well as a set of ladders and a load of paint from a bloke they knew who was just going out of business and wanted to sell everything before declaring himself bankrupt.

Bert said their first job was already arranged, so it wouldn't be long before they would pay back the two hundred pounds. A garage owner in Lenton wanted his premises painted, and Harry had sent an estimate which no sane man would turn down. Alf also knew somebody in Mapperley who needed their house doing up, a big job that would make a few hundred profit if they played their cards right.

George lent them the money, and they swore everlasting friendship as he handed the cheque to Bert.

‘If they succeed,' George said to her later, ‘we won't have much to do with them, though I suppose that whenever they want more equipment they'll ask us for some cash, or if the business starts to fail, which it well might, knowing them, they'll ask me to save it from going under. We shouldn't have helped in the first place, but they're my brothers, after all, so there wasn't much else I could do.' If success depended on the amount of faith George and Pam had in their abilities, they were doomed.

The profits, as Bert told them when he called one Sunday morning (without telephoning first) in his new Vauxhall car, were rolling in. ‘So well, in fact, that we might soon see our way to paying a bit of the money back that you lent us.'

When they made no further effort to get in touch, George thought it was either because they had so much to spend that they forgot what was owed him, or because, which he felt was more likely, their trading of paint for pound notes had, as it were, come unstuck somewhere along the way. If the latter assumption was correct, he did not consider it immoral to gloat on their difficulties, because since they had not repaid his two hundred pounds while they were flush, there was little hope of them doing so in their decline. Such entertainment was, however, expensive, and he was galled at imagining their talk when the first money came in.

‘We've got enough dough to pay our George back,' Harry might have said, throwing bills and invoices into an empty drawer before spreading money and cheques on the table.

Bert picked up a ten pound note to make sure it was real. ‘Don't be a dozy bleeder. We need this for some paint and another ladder.'

‘A new car for all of us, more like,' Alf laughed. ‘We don't have to pay our George back yet. He don't need it like we do.'

Bert scribbled a few sums on a sheet torn from the appointments diary. ‘He's well-off. He'll be lucky if he sees a penny o' that two hundred nicker, old tight-fisted will. It took long enough to squeeze it out of him. And as for that stuck-up wife of his, you know what
she
wants, don't you?'

George knew that his recording was exact, because he had been one of them for so many years. But he hoped they were doing profitable business, and had at last curbed their feckless habits in face of the stark realities of the commercial world. He added to Pam that he was glad to see a spirit of ingenuity and co-operation between them as well as, it seemed, a determination to work.

He saw proof of this while driving through town one day when he stopped at a traffic light and, looking in the direction of a hooter, saw their van pull up by his side. Alf greeted him, and pointed to the others who were asleep in the open back, dead to the universe and caked with paint.

‘We've just done seventeen hours nonstop, slogging all the way!' Alf shouted in triumph, before shooting at the amber and getting half along Parliament Street, a stream of red cloth waving from the ladders tilting up out of the van, before George's careful driving had taken him across the intersection.

13

Still in their working clothes, they came to see George one night. Pam brought them tea and biscuits in the living-room, hoping they would go soon, and not leave too much mess. She disliked herself for such a mean thought about her brothers-in-law who had worked hard all day and were now sitting wearily (and smelling of beer) in her best armchairs.

‘We've come to ask,' Alf said, looking as pale, she thought, as if he were on the point of dying, ‘whether you'll let us paint your house.'

She doubled the sugar in his tea, and told him to take more biscuits.

‘I knew you'd see me right, love!' he said.

George stood in front of the television, legs apart, and hands behind his back. There was nothing to say, though he knew he must not sit down, otherwise he would feel intimidated. Nor must he become too friendly in case he agreed to whatever it was they wanted.

‘The thing is,' Harry put in, ‘that all we've got on for the whole of next week is somebody's living-room, and we can't charge more than forty quid for that.'

Bert surfaced sufficiently from his executive bout of deep thought to say everybody ought to sit down, but George replied that he had been on his arse all day at the office and preferred to exercise his legs a bit in the evening.

‘Not only that,' Harry said, ignoring such a poor excuse, ‘but the rob-dogs are trying to get some income tax out of us. I fucking ask you! Income tax! Us!'

Bert shivered, his close features raw with fury: ‘I got a demand yesterday for three hundred quid.'

So had they all, or something close, but George said he found this hard to credit because he assumed they got paid for their jobs in cash with no questions asked.

‘No,' Bert told him. ‘You allus get the bleeder who holds you to the penalty clause and wants you to work to a pulp, and the swine who's frightened to part with real notes and gives you a cheque and wants a receipt so's he can set it against his own tax. Too many o' them meat-grinding bastards in the world' – his tone hinting that George was more than likely one of them. ‘Some people won't let you live. If they think you're trying to make an honest bob or two they choke with envy.'

‘Wouldn't give you the clippings of their toe-nails.' Harry reached for another biscuit, and knocked the ashtray over so that Pam was obliged to go to the kitchen for a brush and dustpan. They laughed when she'd gone, and George suspected they had planned her removal so that they could talk to him on his own.