Her Victory (24 page)

‘See the doctor afterwards. He'll be in the ward by then.'

They faced each other, and he wondered whether Clara, in spite of her illness, could hear them talking. ‘Would you like to have dinner with me this evening?'

‘That's rather quick!'

‘Quick enough, for a girl from a good family?'

‘And that's rather sharp. But I
could
have said yes.'

‘Only what?'

‘I have to see my boy-friend.'

He laughed. ‘I'm consoled. Matter of having to be.'

‘You're sweet,' she said. ‘It might have been nice.'

‘Thank you. I'll go back to sea a sadder and wiser man.'

‘I don't believe you.'

‘It's the truth. I always do.'

‘You're making me feel disappointed.'

The purpose of his errand told him it was time to cut the banter. He looked through the little square window. Clara was sleeping, and seemed at peace. He went in and placed his cap on the table, the door closing soundlessly behind. No ship's officer could fault the white counterpane, polished floor, clean windows, and flowers by the bed.

Stimulated by his recent closeness to the nurse, he could only stand and look, in spite of the vacant chair, conscious of altitude and not wanting to lose it. Air grated through thin vibrating lips. He could neither sit nor get too close to the breath of this ancient person who did not seem to be the same imposing Aunt Clara he had met at fourteen. He remembered her smelling of scent and sherry, and holding his hand at the pierhead concert, and laughing at coarse jokes while he was aware of her trying not to. If he laughed, she'd stay quiet, but when she laughed out loud and shook her head he was crushed into a silence which he now realized was fear.

The accuracy of a recollection is always distorted by the powerful anchor of the present. Compared to the strength of the present the past was surely dead. Every statement is a damned lie. Sentences ran through his mind, and left him hoping that the young nurse would come in and set his roses by the spinney of carnations.

Her feet twitched. He wanted to smooth them free of irritation and pain. It would be a small service to do for her. She had been the only person to help him, but why was he the most hated member of that family? She had loathed him out of loyalty to the others, but had made him aware that he belonged to them nevertheless. He had been a call on her sense of duty, so she'd had no option but to do what she could. He understood. It had been sufficient.

Even those who in other circumstances might have deserved more, often ended by getting far less. Complaints should never be made. Injustice was not a disadvantage providing you could work, eat, breathe freely and say what you pleased – enough to make any man or woman happy if they had it in them.

One eye open stopped his thoughts. She shook her head, as if to deny whatever was going through his mind. ‘You were flirting with that nurse.'

He nodded. The chair scraped as he drew it close. Her fingers were so cold he thought they were wet, and he folded his hands over them, leaning to hear what she said.

‘I don't blame you. I would, if I could.'

The light was dim. She was the last remnant of his mother, apart from himself. Standing in the open with his sextant, and taking a sight on a star before there was no more horizon, he felt afterwards while he worked out his calculations that the star was now lost among millions and of no further use. The heavens swallowed everything, and though they might sooner or later give something back to redress the balance, they would take his aunt like those stars he had sighted on in order to get his position before darkness intervened.

The stars denied any purpose in life except when you were close to the flesh and blood of someone you loved, or near to the person who hated you most. It was all the same, whichever way you defined the contact. He believed, and he didn't. The truth, which he could never get hold of with sufficient firmness to find his exact emotional position on the earth, caused a pain at his midriff, which he supposed came from the grief of seeing someone die who had wept at his mother's death, and as someone might see him one day slip out of sight like an elusive star. It was a matter of time. That inexorable eater of human bodies was already hovering. The chronometer in its plush box set to Greenwich, and the deckwatch fixed on local time to record each precise micrometer sighting of morning or evening star, ticked away so many unseen deaths a second, but here in a smallish hospital room he watched the demise of someone whom it had never entered his mind that, because he had lived an existence far from proper human contact, he would one day have to see die. For the sea was only a part of reality. On a ship you belonged to a machine for moving people and goods from one place to another. He had always thought that at sea you were also closer to God than when ashore, but in this room it came to him as a revelation that you were only near to God when you were in the proximity of other people.

The nurse placed the roses on the table. She walked out and made no signals. Clara's fragile lids fluttered as if intense life still went on under them. Her hand moved in his, but the flame of life would not return to her arctic limbs. His own burning fingers made no difference.

His watch ticked until its sound was blotted out by her breathing. She withdrew her hand and put it under the clothes as if to find some weight there and hurl it away. He walked from the window to the door, and then back again. Her eyes opened and made him afraid, but he looked at her calmly: ‘You'll be all right.'

She neither saw nor heard. The noise she made sounded like an anchor chain rattling over the side of a ship at the end of a long voyage.

6

In the nurse's office he was given tea and biscuits. She leaned against the table and looked at him. ‘I think you're tired.'

He made an effort not to stare at her shapely legs in dark stockings. He had two weeks ashore, but if he were due back on board tomorrow she wouldn't have noticed any exhaustion. ‘Tell me your name,' he said, ‘if it's not a state registered secret.'

‘Beryl.'

‘I like that.'

‘That's awfully nice of you.' She smiled at her sarcasm, and brushed both hands against her hips. ‘My boy-friend phoned. He won't be able to meet me tonight, after all.'

He wasn't interested. A decade had passed since his suggestion. In every grain in his body he felt emptiness at the prospect of an evening out with this vibrant young woman.

‘Don't worry about your mother.'

‘Aunt,' he told her.

‘Aunt, then. She'll be comfortable. Come and see her tomorrow.'

It was settled. ‘Let's go, then.'

She came close. Girls today thought nothing of making the first move. She put an arm on his shoulder. ‘Will you spin me sailor's yarns?'

He kissed her. Or maybe she kissed him. It was hard to say how it happened. ‘And more,' he said.

Her body-heat was intense, and before they moved apart he knew she couldn't have missed the stiffness at his trousers. ‘I go off duty in half an hour,' she said, ‘but there'll be no strings attached. All right?'

Across the restaurant table he told her what tales came into his mind. She expected it of an older man, listened with a hand at her face as he poured wine and yarned in such a way that she stopped saying how tired he looked. Wine and food charged the veins. She distorted her lips when he smoked between courses. He put the cigarette down. She moved the ashtray to the next table. Clara in the hospital seemed as far away as if he were in Port-au-Prince or Santa Cruz.

They went arm in arm to pick up his bag from the station, then came downhill and walked along the front. Breakers tore against the shingle, an occasional overcharged heave sending spray over their heads. She squeezed his arm as they leaned against the rail. ‘Looks murky. Do you want to be out there?'

‘I'm happier seeing it from here.' He was at ease on a ship. It was home. Even on watch in a gale he was familiar with all procedures and, unless some malevolent flick of the heavens or waves brought a catastrophe, knew what to do.

‘As long as you don't go back tonight.'

‘No chance of that.' Having done most of the talking, he wondered who she was, and what she was really like. If he went mad and proposed marriage and she said yes and they settled down in a little suburban house what would he find out? She was such a mixture of deliberate gaiety and nervous anonymity that when neither spoke he felt as if he were vividly day-dreaming during a monotonous watch in the middle of an ocean. Marriage, he thought, might well be like that.

A touch on the arm brought him back. ‘You've had enough of the sea for a while,' she said, as if trying to tell him something he might not believe.

His half-formed thoughts could only be of use to him after stewing around for a while. ‘I think I'd had enough of the sea when I first clapped eyes on it, but I was fed up even more with something else. Every move you make is an escape from something or other, but I believe I went to sea as a boy because when I first saw such a vast amount of water I was afraid of it.'

They walked across the promenade, back to the shelter of buildings. ‘That's how people often get into things,' she said.

It wasn't, he supposed, that young people these days were especially wise, as that someone of fifty like himself had forgotten the wise or clever things he most likely said at that age. The self-assurance of the young often sounded like wisdom.

She took off her clothes in the hotel room. He was tardy, she said, helping him out of his, not even giving him, he told her, time to read the fire-escape instructions on the back of the door. She laughed, and they kissed before moving to the bed. A sidelight was left on, and she pushed him gently to straddle from above, resting on both palms to draw herself back and forth. It was difficult to lean up and kiss her, but he could touch her breasts which bowed warmly down. She kept her eyes closed, making it impossible to say how far away she was in her mind – or even where he was himself. No star sight could decide their positions in the world, and one could hardly expect both body and horizon to be perfectly joined after so little time together.

Her face was a mask. The run of her velvet movements increased, hair and skin opening, hair swaying across her mouth. She stifled herself on him, breathed noises of separation till the distance between both was immeasurable. He felt her contractions, and his own roots loosened. His existence was divested of meaning, and without regret he let himself go to her vigorous sounds of pleasure.

She was too far away to hear the noise from the mouth of his Aunt Clara which had sounded to him like the chain of an anchor going pell-mell down into the water.

No longer able to support herself, she lay on him and opened her eyes. ‘That was good. I must have needed it.'

He kissed her. ‘You did it by yourself.'

‘The other system doesn't work for me.'

‘I thought you were taking pity on me.'

‘Funny bloke!'

‘That makes two of us.'

She lessened her reliance on him, and transferred some weight to her elbow. ‘Sorry I've got a boy-friend, in some ways.'

‘A beautiful girl like you can't be unattached.'

‘I'm not glued to him, though,' she said firmly. ‘He has his piece of action now and again, and so do I. As long as neither of us knows.'

When she lay under him, he went into her.

‘You must have been a long time at sea,' she said.

There was no way of keeping the talk going. She held him, and moved her hips, and even though her eyes stayed open it was as if neither had any connection with her body. She wanted it to be finished. He went on till he knew she wasn't able to respond in the same way as before, then felt an ejaculation of pure fire that seemed to have no liquid in it.

She washed herself at the sink.

‘Do you mind if I smoke?'

She came back to kiss him. ‘Gives you cancer. Or heart disease. You should stop.'

He embraced her. ‘I'm scared to, in case I
get
cancer.'

He watched her dress, then he washed and put his own clothes on. ‘Don't come out with me,' she said.

‘You're leaving?'

‘I have to be on duty at six, to look after your poor old aunt. And a few others. Stay here and sleep, then you can eat your cornflakes – or whatever they give you in a place like this – read your newspaper, and have a pleasant stroll to the hospital. All right?'

It would have to be. He loved her and let her go, thanking God for such lovely kids. Sleep was a beneficial oblivion.

Almost too late for breakfast, he was grudgingly served. He lifted the lid to see one pale teabag floating in hot water. A cook once served the captain with such vile things, and the pot was thrown off the table. He drank the tasteless tea because he was choking with thirst. The sausages were as soft as putty, and even the trimmings were on the blink, he thought, cracking a piece of cold toast that was sharp enough to cut his throat, and smearing butter that looked suspiciously like margarine. The only genuine article was the bill of twenty pounds.

But he left his tip, and sat out his time while he smoked at the table, unaware that they were waiting for him to move. It was impossible to do so. There was no eagerness to go out and find that his life had changed. He already knew it, felt a relaxation so complete that for the moment it paralysed him. He suddenly did not know how to move, waited to do so, unwilling to give himself an order which he sensed would not be obeyed.

7

As a deck officer it was often necessary to pull back into the protection of his own shiftless and brooding mind, solitary contemplation teaching him how to stay sane when he felt as meaningless as the heaving sea outside the cabin. The ability to discipline his threatened mind into quiescence had come slowly, in tune with the growing power of the years to crush him into an uncontrollable blackness. The conscious effort to build a defensive system left no emotional energy for friends, or for the kind of prolonged relationship which might turn him into a tolerable human being. He considered people in the mass to be as threatening in their ever-changing unknowingness as the sea, which often turned wild by some force over which no agency in the universe seemed to have influence, and flew up against him like an enormous and mindless grey wolf intending to take his life away.