Her Victory (54 page)

A noise deepened into thunder and tore her eyes open. A mass from the outside world threw itself at her. She sat up. Light came through curtain slits.

‘Open the fucking door.'

She hurriedly put on shirt and slacks, buttoning and zipping. Her fingers wouldn't work. She felt sick, and choked back her dread. ‘Go away.'

A piece of paper had been pushed in as if it might save her life. She snatched at it. ‘Gone out for a while.' George must have watched him leave.

‘Let me in, you whore.'

‘I'll see you downstairs, at Judy's.' I won't see you. Keep out of my life. I'm finished with you. She shouted, but he banged at the panels, then ran at the door with his broad shoulders, shot latch, lock and bolt apart, and was in the room.

She would not let him see her terror. ‘I told you: I'd meet you downstairs.'

He had grown stouter, as if in the habit of boozing heavily. He trembled as he leaned against the doorway. ‘Pack your things. I've got the car outside.'

Say something, but don't argue. And say it quietly. He was strong and agile, but his skin was blotched. He was grieved, and full of violence. ‘I've only just got out of bed. You woke me up. If you'd let me know you were coming we could have met somewhere and talked things over properly.'

The clock said nine. He had set out in darkness, full of energy and purpose, see-sawed with love and loathing, till loathing got the upper hand, as it always did. His eyes had hardened during the long stare of a hundred and forty miles of road, impacted by tar and dazzling light thrown back.

‘Pack your stuff. We'll talk in the car.' He looked around the room. ‘It wain't take long.'

She stood with hands together to stop them shaking. The only way to evade him was to die, or pray for his instant obliteration. She remembered that for the first time in her life there was something to live for.

He moved closer. ‘I ain't got much time. The lads came down with me. We're to be back at work today. There's no time to waste.' His fist banged down and tipped her clock, as if angry that she looked at it and not him. His previously contained insanity was erupting. There was no one else in the world but himself, and the person that he wanted to control – which is me, she thought. No will or object could stand in his way, certainly not an instrument for the marking of time.

In such a way he had been insane since she first met him, and she must have known it, and been ensnared because his maniacal sense of possession had left her with no possibility of refusing whatever he wanted. Her presence during their marriage had kept him on the proper side of normal life. And if much of the time she had seemed out of her mind herself, it was only because she was taking the madness from him so that he could function properly. She would have no more of that.

He pulled at her. ‘You
will
get in the car, if I have to kick you in.'

She looked around.

‘
He
won't help you.'

He had been drinking, kept a bottle in the glove-box. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Alf, Harry and Bert are waiting downstairs for that git. Our family stands together, you should know that. Twenty quid each, and extra for petrol. A good day's pay, but they stick by me, all the same.'

To pack was easy, and then to unpack. ‘Let go of my arm.' He had worked out his plan, so there was no one to help. ‘I don't want to come with you.'

‘You will, though, let me tell you.'

She opened the drawer. One thrust, and she was up for murder. No one would believe her. He attacked me. Where are your marks? ‘And what are you going to do when we get to Nottingham? Do you have a room with bars at the window?'

‘Ah, no, duck.' His mood altered. ‘Once you're back home, and you see how nice it is, you'll be your old self again. It's warm and clean up there, not like this freezing pigsty. You'll be as right as rain.'

‘I don't suppose you've had breakfast yet,' she said.

He sat down, resting on his knees, looking more alone than he could have thought it possible to be. ‘We was up at four. I've given
them
two days pay – double time – and a bonus after we've got
you
back home. This little lot's costing me nearly two hundred. So just get packing, or I'll block your throat with your teeth.'

‘It's a lot of money,' she said, ‘just to get me home.'

His brothers had fed him the filth. ‘It ain't right for her to do it on you like this, George, after all you've done for her. I'll bet she's having a real old carry-on down in London. God knows what she's up to, but she's finding plenty to keep her busy. A woman can allus find a man down there when she wants to. Thinks she can get a lot more from him than she can get from her husband. I expect she can, as well. You was never one for giving her a lot of
that
, was you, George? Too busy at your factory, though we can't blame you for that. I suppose she even cracks jokes about you to her new bloke. Wouldn't be surprised, I wouldn't. If I was you I'd go down and give her a bloody good pasting. Bring her to her senses. Get her back home for a dose of you-know-what. That's all they want. If Mavis played the same stunt on me I'd give her such a smack in the chops she wouldn't wake up for a week. She'd be as right as rain, then. That's what you ought to do with your Pam. Do you both a lot of good. We'll help you to find her and get her back, wain't we, lads? Mind you, we've got a few jobs on at the moment and time's money, ain't it, George? You're allus saying so, but we know you'll make it right with us if we give you a hand. After all, brothers have to stand by one another.'

He threaded the fingers of both hands together, so that a whole series of cracks ran along the knuckles. ‘I can't wait much longer.'

She dodged as he tried to grab. ‘I'll come in my own time.'

Terrorist force was on his side, his unreal calculations taking account only of himself. He lived in the vacuum of his own needs, which admitted nobody else's because he thought his desires were also the world's. His clenched fist flashed at her face. ‘You'll come
now
.'

He was quick, and the room was small, but she avoided all but the close-winded rush. She had nowhere to go. The refuge that had taken weeks to construct had turned into the perfect trap. ‘I'm not going by force.'

She spoke whatever words would stall him from one moment to the next, but despised herself for uttering such phrases of surrender before the threat of his fists. His eyes, and the brain behind them, assumed she belonged to him because he was stronger, and that she had no life of her own.

He stood back, as if he had won round one, and could afford to wait. ‘Take your time. Have a few minutes if you like. I don't want to rush you.'

She was wary. He closed the door. She wouldn't get it open in time if she ran. Tom had no doubt been waylaid by his brothers. Three to one was their style.

He lit a cigarette. ‘Want one?'

She shook her head.

He acted like a friend, but was not very good at it. He smiled. ‘Go on,' and held the packet towards her.

‘No thank you.'

She put a suitcase on the table. She should have accepted the cigarette. Lull him. She took a dress from the wardrobe, and walked to fold it in the light of the window which gave a view up and down the street. Tom wasn't in sight, but neither were the others. George's car was in a meter-bay a hundred yards away. Maybe he had only put enough money in for an hour, and wanted her out quickly because he didn't care to overstay his time. Like most ambitious men who lived in their own small area he was law-abiding, for while he had the born energy and skill to do his job well he did not have the ingenuity to break the law and feel confident that he would never get caught, especially in London. Nor did he have the necessary panache to bend the regulations and not care whether he was found out. Therefore he had put in enough money for the maximum of two hours in case something went wrong.

‘I must get some fresh air into the room after sleeping in it all night.' She opened the window. Impossible to jump before he grabbed her. His hands twitched, as if afraid she might try. Perhaps he wouldn't care. If she flashed out of his sight it would make a respectable end to his troubles. Or he would hire someone to push her around in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

‘Yes,' he said, ‘the room does pong. You must have been drinking. You never did booze, though. The odd shandy now and again. But I expect you're on the hard stuff every night, with the sort of company you keep.'

He looked wretched again, and threatening. A real woman would have sympathized with his suffering – and been destroyed. But she wouldn't. He could plead as much as he liked. Every word he spoke ate into his self-esteem. Then he became quiet. She too had better say nothing. Yet silence could only mean surrender. He called the tune. The leader led, but where did he take you? You didn't follow. So he was no longer a leader. But the rules he made her live by were so deep in him that he wasn't even aware that they existed. Lucky man. All men were lucky – though they might not know it – by much more than a head start. Yet it was best not to think so, because that too was only part of their unspoken rules and the effect they had on you. How could you be yourself, or know yourself, if you were under that kind of domination? You didn't follow. You did anything but follow. A man with no one to follow him was finished. He was beaten. You just did not follow.

He smiled at her silence. Won again. He didn't even need to say it. The damp air that came coldly in might stir her sufficiently to think properly and find a way out of her peril. Still holding the dress, she went to the chest of drawers. ‘I don't drink half as much as you imagine. I can't take it. Do you remember when we went to that club? I had, two small gins, and was ill when I got home. All I drink is a glass of wine, and then only with a meal.'

Using her dress as a cover she opened the drawer and gripped the knife in her right hand. There was no other way. The more she spoke the more silent and depressed he became. He pulled back into the bleak spaces inside, his familiar manoeuvre being to retreat with set mouth and glazed eyes, and surround himself with a broken-glass zone of resentment that could only be entered by those who admitted to being the cause of his distress, even if they weren't. It was a trick he had often used, of blaming her for the dark moods that would occasionally envelop him for no reason. She was long used to his expressions. To comfort him was to accept the blame for the way he felt, and not to comfort him was to be blamed because her very presence made him feel worse. It was as if she were back home already. Futile emotional competition once more enmeshed them. Her months of freedom vanished in a moment.

Air from the open window pushed at the small of her back. Her face burned but her body stayed cold. The dress fell to the floor and she held the knife in front. She knew him too well not to love him, but it was the love of pity, not the love between equal human beings. Despair pierced her so sharply that she lunged.

He leapt from his chair and staggered away. The point tore his coat. What she needed to tell him fused into a mass and would not be said. There was nothing to say any more. If he wanted so crucially to lead anyone, let him lead that remnant of himself which might yet redeem him as the good person he could well be in some unreachable part of himself. He saw clearly what she demanded from him, but he would not do it. She lifted the knife again.

He stared at the razorsharp blade in the hope perhaps that she would stare back long enough to be hypnotized into losing her determination. His lips were about to say something. He would try to argue, but if she replied with words it would weaken her stance. Words were finished. When in his presence they seared her too painfully.

He darted, speedy as a cat, to grab her arm. She stood aside and brought the knife against his hand. He squealed. It was real. He went back to the door, afraid to turn and open it in case the knife burned into his back. He held his wrist high, and blood came from an opening cut. The insanity was in her own eyes, and she prayed he would leave. But she would neither ask nor order. He had to go without words. Words were finished.

She flexed her body. He saw the movement. His cry suffused him with shame at having to plead, but it was a shame which gave him courage to stay where he was. He would fight for his life. He shifted as if to come forward, but it was hopeless because he could no longer take her by surprise. He noted her knuckles whiten at the grip, and her left hand come out as if to give a firm balance.

His smile was a sign of wanting to placate her, almost of surrender, and stopped her hand lifting for its final drive. His features, bunched like a baby's about to weep at some primal disappointment, caused her to brace herself for a sly attack. His life was saved. She lowered the knife, but lifted it not quite so high. She hadn't lived with him twenty years for nothing. No sudden attack was possible, because the gleam of the blade was sharper than any eye.

There was a rattle at the door. Inside or out, she didn't know. His unwounded hand clutched the knob. He didn't want to go, needed to speak, to plead, to get the knife clear and batter her to death. She watched the flicker of his eyelids when he tried to look directly at her. He wasn't able to, as if he would go blind should he succeed. His hand motioned for peace, while his head was fixed at an angle that only allowed him to see the floor.

Her terror was in abeyance while she waited. However abject, he could leap like a tiger, but the cold air kept her alert, and if he ran she would kill. He wouldn't force her. She would force him. The rattling of the door knob was to distract her. His eyes looked up, and she swung the knife.

The sleeve of his suit was soaked. The twitch of his face and the sway of her knife came out of the same impulse. An ache pained him. His eyes pleaded for her to speak. Any words from her would have been balm, but she couldn't trust him. Trust also was finished. It was an all-or-nothing game, and she hoped to die rather than have it go on by his rules.