Her Victory (60 page)

Sam waited. Each bullet cost five pence, and he trembled at the amount being spent. Hilary fired more quickly. Between the noise Sam heard waves coming through the pier supports and shouldering against the beach. He collected the empty shellcases for trading at school. Money flowed like water into the hands of the attendant, for he and Hilary had thirty shots each before Tom reckoned their smarting shoulders might tell them it was time to leave. But Hilary's headache came first, and she had to get out. Sam was so pale it seemed he would be sick either from excitement or the peculiar powder-like smell of the airless place. They took their cardboard targets, to compare scores at the end of the pier.

He watched their zigzag antics on the Dodgem Cars. There was no straightforward life for them or anybody, even though they were looked after to the top of Judy's ability. He supposed there was intelligence on the father's side as well, yet they were being brought up as if they would one day have to function like bandits in the hills. They weren't getting what they deserved. It wasn't easy to say exactly what they lacked. A father, most likely, though he found it difficult to believe there was no better solution than that. But it was also true, as he had occasionally found in life, that the most obvious solution was often the only one possible, and in many cases the best.

He bought them ice-cream with a stick of flaky chocolate. Flickering cold rain made them fasten their duffel coats as they trekked against it to the road, each holding one of Tom's hands as if they would belong to him for ever.

16

Pam closed the door, no click to the latch, unwilling to feel guilty or ashamed. She had forestalled Judy's pleading. Did I? Was that how it happened? Impossible for her to have initiated it, or to deny such a thing with her, so out of an exquisite regard which was now a vital matter to them, and of no concern to anyone else, she had let her.

They had their secret, and she was not unhappy. No one could know how much pleasure they had given each other, and as for having a secret from Tom, what love had value which was without a secret to give it depth and solidity? It could not wreck their love, though if he knew, would he consider it a danger? If it had been with a man he no doubt would, and if he didn't she would be hurt and amazed. She could only hold back those thoughts which threatened to bring shame, guilt, and self-condemnation on every count. She'd had enough of that.

Surrounded by dresses, skirts, blouses and underwear, Judy slept as if she hadn't rested for months. Among scattered clothes she seemed dismembered, though her spirit, reflected in her face, was as calm as if set in stone. She needed peace, love, money, or a job she liked, Pam thought, unable to break the gaze at her whose transposition to calmness was more complete than that given by a change of fifty-year-old clothes.

There was a noise as if a sack of apples had been thrown against the front door. She opened it at the bell, and the children fell in, pink-faced and breathless. ‘We shot bullets,' Hilary cried. ‘Real bullets from a rifle, Pam. Look at my card: you can see the holes!'

Tom took off his overcoat. ‘There's a shooting gallery on the pier. The only thing that would keep them quiet.'

‘I'm frozen,' Hilary said. ‘That rain had needles in it.'

Pam pulled her close, a smell of wet clothes and soapy scalp. ‘Go in the kitchen then, where it's warm.'

But she wouldn't. ‘I'm starving-hungry, as well.'

‘Me too,' said Sam, to be in competition.

‘They're packed tight with ice-cream,' Tom told her, ‘so they can wait for dinner.' He looked: ‘Where's Judy?'

‘She fell asleep. I left her among all the clothes. She certainly looks a picture!'

‘She's always falling asleep,' Hilary said. ‘She's got sleepy sickness.'

Sam held out his arm. ‘Can I look through your binoculars again, Tom?'

Raindrops flecked the window panes. ‘You won't see much at the moment.' He hung them round his neck. ‘Sit on that chair, and tell me if you see a ship coming towards us. Then we'll take evasive action!'

‘I'll wake Judy.' She left him opening the wine. Impossible to disturb her. She closed the door and knelt by the bed. There was hardly a breath, only a faint tremor at the breast, and at the closed eyes. She moved to kiss her lips, but held back. She could only go so far, must be met at least half-way before she would dare such sweetness. A kiss would wake her, and Judy would know why. Kisses that didn't waken were impossible. There might be a reason, if she were seeing her for the last time. And she didn't want that. Friends in her new life affected her profoundly. Her brain had turned about. She smiled at the difference in consciousness. If Judy were awake a kiss would be easy. Or would it? She had never kissed a woman on the lips before today, at least not when it meant so much. She stroked her forehead, unable to believe such gentleness could be felt through the curtain of Judy's sleep, the pad of her finger ends going backwards and forwards along the faint lines.

It was hard to regain control of her feelings so that the experience could be put behind her. She wanted to look back on it, instead of being ever-worried by its implications, which was the only possibility of keeping it as marvellous as she had found it, and the one way she wanted to think about Judy when they faced each other again – without guilt, as the only moments of freedom in her life, if freedom was the time when what you did had not only no connection whatever to the thought within but advanced your consciousness in a direction you never suspected was possible, in such a way as to allow you the choice as to whether or not you wanted to go there at all.

The idea expanded, and warmed her. She felt a more malleable affection than before, as if she had been inside the moon and was still glowing from its heat, though she assumed that Judy would think nothing of their encounter, and that they would probably not meet in such a way again.

Her eyes opened. Neither spoke. Judy looked, as if wanting to know where she was before trusting herself to say anything. ‘I haven't enjoyed it so much for a long time,' she said.

Pam nodded.

‘I didn't expect it.' She held her hand. ‘And so quick!'

‘Secret?'

There was mischief in her glint. ‘Yes, sure.' She sat up. ‘I slept ten hours in one. You've changed back to your own clothes.'

‘I know. But keep yours on. You look grand in them.'

Judy stood. ‘I need a wash. Now I know why you asked me to come down!'

‘That wasn't the reason.'

She laughed. ‘Have the children been good?'

‘Tom says so.' She watched her fasten her skirt and blouse, then tidy her hair at the mirror. ‘I can't believe how different you look.' When Judy kissed her on the lips she stiffened.

‘Relax,' she whispered in her ear. ‘I won't hurt you. Or eat you!'

‘It isn't that. But we'd better go.'

She was held firmly by the waist. ‘If you come to London I'll ask you to stay with me.'

She would never be there again, she supposed. At least not alone. ‘All right.'

Sam and Hilary played on the floor with the colour supplements and a packet of felt pens, elaborately vandalizing the advertisements, while Tom read an article in the Sunday paper by a Member of Parliament who began by calling himself a friend of Israel and then went on to consider it right and proper that Israel should surrender its provinces of Judaea and Samaria (and therefore its secure borders) as well as Jerusalem the capital city, as a mark of goodwill to the Arabs, for the sake of international peace, not to mention oil supplies to a Europe which, Tom reflected with disgust, had never been reconciled to the existence of a Jewish State.

A feature on how to decorate houses seemed genuine because it made fewer demands on credulity and credibility, but he was diverted by someone coming into the room whom for a moment he did not know.

The sky turned dark outside, and with only wall-lights on, the shadows lengthened Judy's pale face. Her features were stilled at his gaze. The long skirt and high collar turned her statuesque, made her severe and formidable, an apparition until she spoke. She had stepped from one of his memories, as if an acquaintance of his mother's or aunt's had reappeared with a disturbing suddenness that would silence any speech.

She sensed the unwanted effect, deciding she had been foolish to dress up and that Tom regarded her transformation as either an act of thievery, deception, or cheek. Hilary got up from the floor and ran to fasten her arms around her mother. ‘What's the matter with you, mummy? What happened?'

‘Stop crying, and don't be so bloody silly.'

She smiled at Tom, and was again recognizable. Hilary's octopus grip was hard to break. ‘I hope you don't mind me having looted your family's rag-trade heirlooms?'

‘I said you could.'

‘You look as if I'm back from the dead, though.'

Such clothes enhanced her beauty. ‘I did wonder, for a moment.'

The oil-painted face above the mantelshelf seemed to be observing her deliberate pose. ‘Almost feel it myself,' she said.

‘You look splendid.'

She rested a hand on the piano, a distorted reflection filling the polished top, broken when she turned savagely on Sam for his continued stare. ‘Never seen a woman before?'

‘Take them off,' Hilary whimpered.

Judy walked over and stroked her daughter's hair. ‘At least you're normal. But don't worry. I'll be back in my old drag-clouts soon. Then you can feel safe again.' She turned to Pam. ‘That's the trouble with kids – you never know what to do for the best!'

‘Perhaps if you take to wearing such clothes,' Tom suggested, ‘you might civilize them.' Yourself as well – but he wanted peace while they were here, and said nothing.

‘I told her how marvellous she looked.'

Pam wished she had kept silent when Judy scoffed in reply, piqued perhaps because everyone seemed determined to undermine her: ‘You should be the last person to want to straighten me out.'

Her attack, veiled as it was in her own sort of humour, was noted by Tom, and also by Sam who had turned pale at this apparition in unfamiliar dress. The seriousness of the insinuation was marked by a twitch of alarm on Pam's lips. Judy relied on her reputation for outlandish remarks in order to evade the responsibility for what she said, whether it had been true or not, but this time she knew she had gone too far, and tried to make amends, a move which to any acute person, which Pam thought meant everyone in the room, could only confirm the truth of what she had implied.

‘After all,' Judy added with a laugh, ‘you said I ought to try
something
on.'

‘I'm glad you took her advice.' Any words from Tom were better than none, relevant or not, and he spoke only to break the lull following Judy's assertion which, open to more interpretations than could be fitted in now, was most likely a jocular comment that meant nothing to anyone except herself. Certainly, Pam's frown vanished as soon as he turned to pour drinks for the three of them.

PART SIX

Adrift

1

He packed the car as if it were a small boat in which they would be going around the world, with few ports of call from which to get provisions. He had filled an alphabetical notebook with lists of what was to be taken, and had assembled separate collections of cases, kitbags and cardboard boxes on the living-room floor. All feasible preparations had been made. At five in the morning he carried stores and luggage to the hall. He made many trips down the stairs, and needed no help.

The last item put into the car was his sextant.

‘What do you want that for?'

‘The Lord only knows,' he said. ‘But I'll take it.'

He was a star-gazer, but with his feet firmly on the earth. She did not ask when they would be coming back. He said they would be away some time. She replied that as far as she was concerned it could be for ever. Already boxed, the sextant was wedged with newspapers into a separate carton.

I'll go with you, she had said, adding that by so doing she would be accompanying herself like a jailer, because there was no other way to stay in the world and prevent a return to George. Once a change begins, alterations never stop. If you stop, you begin to retreat. You are lost. So no half measures. She liked that. She might find what she had always wanted, but which up to now she hadn't known that she
had
wanted: a destination without salt or tears, wherever it might be. She was his ally in the adversity of having been born and, at her most tender, felt sensations that made all areas of love seem unexplored.

She slept and dreamed till six o'clock. No sense in both of them getting up, he said. Stay awhile. She sank under water and earth, but could only clamber on to a gaudy fairground roundabout that spun too quickly and made her feel sick. The booth of the headless woman was flashed now and again into her sight. She rushed to the bathroom just in time. Childish to be so excited over a bit of travelling. You look like the miller's daughter, her face said from the mirror, while she wondered what food of the last few days had made her vomit. A hand scraped around the inside of her stomach as she got on to her knees at the toilet bowl. She went back to bed till he called, and in her sleep knew she was dreaming, till she forgot there would ever be a time to wake.

It looks as if we'll need two cars, not one, to shift this lot, she had said. He kissed her. ‘It'll fit in. Means a bit of judicious packing, that's all. Balance the weight, to keep the car stable on turns and bends.' He had already washed the car, and cleaned it inside. She got food, to last a few days. ‘There are restaurants,' he said on seeing so much. ‘And cafés.'

She had premonitions of being unable to find a hotel, of dusk creeping down on a road that ran through a gorge where they would stop the car and hear silence but for icy water speeding over rocks. The road was crumbling in places, dangerous to continue in such bleak twilight. Near a wide part of the road, too close to rushing water to feel easy, they would open the back of the car to get at the primus. While he erected the tent under a tree she would open a few tins and slice bread for an evening meal. Or she would put up the tent, and he would do the cooking. Wolfish noises would sound over local music plinking from the radio. But they'd fill mugs with red wine to swill down what they ate. They were on the road and the road led wherever they wanted it to, whether hairpin or straight. Day after day they would pay less attention to the tattered maps, and on parking by the roadside would notice a tin thrown away on last stopping at that spot. They were going round in circles, and would soon get weary. The moon would disappear, never to come back. They would not have the will to continue, nor the energy to return. There would be nowhere to go, and nothing to look for any more. They had been everywhere, yet had arrived at no recognizable destination. When wolves threatened, and it seemed death to take another step, the Wandering Jew would call to God and become strong again. Or would he?