Flight into Camden Read online

  ‘You’re not going?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was quiet, and dressed quickly.

  ‘But you can’t.’

  ‘I think it’d be better to go. I’ll see you tomorrow, don’t worry.’

  ‘I’m not.… But you mustn’t go.’

  ‘Why do you want me to stay?’

  ‘I don’t … but the neighbours will hear you. It’s nearly twelve. They know we’re away for the week-end.’

  I still lay on the bed. He ran his hand over my body, and made a sound when I flinched.

  He stroked my body. ‘I think I’d better go,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it quietly, and nobody will know.’

  ‘Why are you going?’

  ‘I’d feel uneasy sleeping here. I want to leave you in bed.’

  ‘You’ll have to walk all the way back into town.’

  ‘Never mind.’

  He sat on the bed, looking towards me, then bent down to pull on his shoes. I got up and felt for my dressing-gown behind the door and put it on. ‘Why do you want me to stay, really?’ he asked, the whiteness of his face still turned towards me.

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘It’s much wiser for me to go,’ he insisted.

  ‘Yes … You go.’

  He was uncertain. I went downstairs with him and unlocked the front door quietly. He made an arrangement to meet me the next day, standing in the dark a moment. Then he touched my breasts again, wanting to kiss them. I held him away.

  He felt his way down the steps and across the narrow front garden. He walked on the grass verge until he was down the road, then he stepped on to the roadway itself. I shut the door. I could hear his feet thudding between the houses, beating back up the street. I listened for some time, standing perfectly still in the darkness of the hall, afraid of the house. His sounds echoed towards me as if he were returning, then retreated slowly, fading away so slowly that I felt I could still hear them long after they must have disappeared.

  He was confident the next day. He seemed physically larger.

  During the morning he had found a room, and moved his few belongings in. He was pleased with himself, and shy. He took me on the bus to see the place, tucked away at the far end of town, lower down the river. I loved being with him when other people could see us. I held his arm, proud of him and of what we were.

  But his room, in a street of detached houses turned into flats, was depressing; it had a dampness and darkness that clung like an inherent thing, never leaving and always accumulating. He was unaware of it, just as if its dull smell and the darkness, the dirty embossed wallpaper and the metal bed were exactly what he needed.

  ‘I can see you’re annoyed with me,’ he said. ‘Why is it?’

  He sat on the edge of the bed, the door wide open for the landlady who moved about on the stairs.

  ‘It’s an awful place.’

  He sighed, but not disappointed. ‘You’re always full of “awful” things. One thing then another.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d come to a place like this. I prefer that Studio place to this, and that’s degrading enough.’

  ‘Degrading?’ He lifted his eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘Is that how seriously you take it? You think it affects my pride?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He bounced up and down on the bed complacently, making it creak and groan; then leaned forward to listen to the landlady’s movements. ‘I don’t think my pride’s concerned at all,’ he said lightly, almost laughing at my seriousness.

  ‘You’re letting yourself go,’ I told him.

  He stood by the bed, resting one knee on it, his hands in his pockets. He looked contemptuous in his anxiety, then he smiled. ‘You daft thing, Margaret. What’re you taking it so seriously for?’

  ‘It’s where you’re going to live.’

  ‘It’s only a room. You’re not going to judge me by appearances, surely?’

  ‘I think so. Somehow you’ve encouraged me to do that. I don’t always, of course.’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘When you think how you promenaded Fawcett and that Ben in front of me … you judged them harshly, from appearances. You wanted me to do the same.’

  ‘Ah, but not with me though.’

  ‘Well that’s where you get some of it back.’

  ‘I’m satisfied with it, and that’s all that matters,’ he said brightly. ‘Come on, we’ll go back to town, and I’ll never bring you here again.’

  He seemed sure of where he would take me. We hurried through the thick Saturday afternoon crowds without speaking. He was remote and intent, and large with my feeling for him. ‘Where are we going?’

  He shook his head. ‘You’ll see.’ And took my hand.

  We joined a long bus queue in the street behind the bus station. ‘We’re not going to the football match?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, now, show a bit of life. It’s something I like, so try and smile a bit. In any case, why don’t you like it? There’re plenty of women in the queue. One or two anyway. And we can get seats.’

  ‘It’s so crude,’ I told him, and he laughed.

  ‘That’s very good,’ he said. ‘I only wish you’d come out with more things like that. It’s much more like you if you only knew. What’s so crude about it, then? I’m not crude, you know.’

  ‘You are in some ways.’

  He was amused and delighted with me. He still held my hand, and was elated as he always was by the presence of a crowd. ‘In what ways am I crude?’ he asked indulgently.

  ‘In ways you’re not aware of.’

  ‘Oh, is that it?’ He laughed, squeezing my hand and resting his cheek against mine a moment. ‘I love you, Margaret.’

  ‘You’re not conscious of a lot of things about yourself. I suppose it’s that which makes our Michael think of you as an artist rather than just a person. You’re helpless with it. Artists are helpless people to our Michael.’

  ‘When am I so crude like this?’

  ‘Whenever you’re doing things instinctively, or out of feeling. Then you begin to be crude.’

  ‘Now isn’t that just the root of everything with you,’ he said, darkening. ‘You’re afraid of feeling, of letting yourself go. You call it crude. And the rest of your family, I should imagine. You’re such a bloody puritan. Only an out and out puritan could think and act like you do. Aren’t you ever aware of this little strait-jacket you carry around?’

  ‘I don’t call it that. It’s order, it’s discipline. A real person needs it.’

  ‘To be respectable.’

  ‘To be a person, not just a selfish lout.’

  ‘Am I as much as that?’

  ‘At times you’re a lout.’

  ‘What’s got into you today? You’ve got this so sane attitude to everything – that it mustn’t impose iself, it mustn’t show what it feels. It makes everything lifeless and undistinguished. It destroys everything. We’re asked to be like this. But it doesn’t mean you’ve got to obey.’

  We were walking aimlessly, holding hands. As if we’d been joined together in spite of our feelings.

  ‘What do you do with your feelings?’ I asked. ‘You’ve destroyed far more than I could ever do. I can’t destroy anything.’

  ‘You destroy what’s in you. Where are your feelings? You only call me helpless because I care for myself. I can’t stick this ever-so-nice respect you have for other people. Not with you, I can’t.’

  ‘Except you make love to me.’

  ‘Isn’t it just like a woman to say that? Yet even then, a thing like that, it’s an obligation to you. An act of pity or benediction or some such lousy thing. Haven’t you got any respect left for yourself? You let yourself escape in well ordered little dribbles. You’re just like everybody else.… Like a mother feeding a baby, giving it milk when she feels like it, not when the baby wants it. Don’t you realize?– I’ve got something to give you, Margaret. I’m not just grabbing what I can get like everybody else. I’ve got something, and I want you to have it.’ />
  ‘But why did you want to go to the football match if it’s just that sort of discipline that hurts you? Won’t you find the crowd a pack of trained animals?’

  ‘I like to see it,’ he stated simply. ‘But I don’t like seeing you a well-trained puppy, obeying all the demands of your family, shuddering at anybody who might show themselves in public.’

  ‘I love my family.’

  ‘I know. But this is the first sign of life that you’ve given, to my knowledge. I can just imagine how they must have shouted at Manchester when you told them you were coming back … the little pup cocks its leg up in the wrong place at last.’

  ‘They didn’t shout, and they didn’t fight back. I never want to hurt them again.’

  ‘Why ever not? Your family’s a rotten family, although you can’t do anything about it. It’s dead. You should all have been pigs like my parents. Your house is like a mausoleum.’

  But unaware, we’d been walking towards it, along Petersgate towards the rising mound of the estate. Howarth was lost in the traffic and the violent business around him. The old brick factories enclosed the road.

  ‘You want me to despise myself, that’s really what you’re asking.’ He walked stubbornly beside me, clutching my hand tightly.

  ‘Then you’ll want me to turn to you,’ I said. ‘You’re like an evangelist in that. You want to destroy everything around me so that I’ve got to turn to you.’

  ‘Isn’t that something you want?’ He smiled ironically at me. ‘You’ve been wanting a saviour all your life. It was the first thing that struck me when I met you. And now that you’ve got one you’re more afraid than ever, and want him to be condemned after all like you. Rather than have one person saved, you’d prefer all the lot of us to go.’

  ‘And you want to save me from my family.’

  ‘No. I don’t want any of that. It’s you who’s crying out for salvation.’

  ‘I am a princess, after all, to you. You think you’ve seen me wave my handkerchief from the window and you come dashing up in all this emotional armour.’

  ‘It’d be pretty silly. Only I’ve got no armour. I’ve no protection at all against someone like you. That’s something you’ve never understood at all.’

  ‘You’re not as weak as all that,’ I said. ‘It pleases you to think you’re helpless. The poor orphan. You’re always talking in that sick way about the working class and your awful parents. I can see the implication all right.’

  ‘It was you who told me I was helpless.’

  ‘Yes, and you are. But my God, you know how to take advantage of it. Don’t ever tell me you don’t.’

  ‘I don’t know … I must seem very artful to you.’

  ‘There’s nothing babyish about you, Howarth. You’re clever and smart, I can tell. And you know how to destroy.’

  ‘How am I helpless and crude, then?’ he said, knowing now that he had triumphed.

  ‘Because other people make you helpless. They’re prepared to deny themselves so that you can be as you are. It’s really them who’ve given everything to you. You’re like a lost person to other people, but you irritate them by insisting that you know exactly where you are. It’s so obvious that you’re wrong.’

  He laughed at his incomprehension. We walked up the avenue between the rows of houses without speaking. He glanced up occasionally at the blank fronts as if they vaguely amused him.

  A neighbour was raking in her front garden when we got near the house. She looked up in surprise and called out, ‘Isn’t your Michael getting wed today, Margaret?’ She stared at Howarth with a vibrant curiosity. ‘Aren’t you going to be there to see them off?’ she added.

  ‘No,’ I told her.

  She was satisfied at my awkwardness. She watched us go round the back of the house. Howarth stood on the steps while I unlocked the door, gazing at the backs, nervous and contemptuous of the place.

  ‘What sort of house is it … that you have?’ I asked him.

  He followed me into the scullery and shut the door. ‘I suppose you think it’s a lot, giving up all I’ve done. But now … it doesn’t seem to have had any importance at all – the family, responsibilities …’ He watched me taking my coat off.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t try and mislead me all the time,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a nasty tone,’ he said. ‘And just because that woman annoyed you out there.’

  He took off his coat and knelt down in front of the fireplace and with a small shovel began scooping out the ashes from under the grate. He wafted the dust carefully up the chimney with slow, steady motions of his hand. ‘No, leave this to me,’ he said when he thought I might interfere. ‘I’ll find everything myself.’

  As he worked in the small neatness of the room he looked strangely in sympathy with it: the care and the concern he had. My mother had left the room, with the glowing, polished table, the white, smooth, embroidered dust covers on the backs of the easy chairs, as if it would be minutely inspected during every second of her absence. He seemed to work with consideration for her.

  He went to the back porch and came back with the bucket. He shovelled the ashes in with the same care for the dust. When he returned from emptying them in the yard he brought a collection of wood refuse, and the bucket was full of coal. His hands were black. He worked now with a careless preoccupation and absorption, as if he knew I was aware of him. I wondered how he had been with his family, how he had reacted to their warmth and their early affection.

  He crumpled the newspapers up in the grate and arranged the pieces of wood on top. ‘We use some proper wood to light the fire,’ I told him. ‘It’s out at the back. Pit props that my father chops up.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘You can leave your father out of this one. I’m lighting the fire. All you’ve got to do is be ready to laugh: I’m exposing myself.’

  He was freshly confident. He lit the paper and waited for the wood to crackle, then began laying on small pieces of coal, dropping them into place with a delicacy for their weight. The flame curled round the coal, and there was hardly any smoke. He propped the shovel across the opening and draped a newspaper in front. The fire began to roar.

  He stood back, pleased, his black hands clasped together, watching the redness expand behind the paper. He waited until the paper was singed brown, then pulled it away to reveal the coal well ablaze and roaring strongly, the flames darting up the chimney. He looked at me gladly. ‘You never thought I could do it.’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  He laughed to himself, and went into the scullery to wash his hands. He came back conscious of my resentment.

  He pulled the easy chair up to the fire and sat over it, greedily. The flames had subsided after the force of the draught. ‘You haven’t much sense of humour,’ he said. ‘I reckon that must be a big disability.’

  ‘Why?’ I said, cynical about him.

  ‘It might be better if you laughed at me sometimes.’

  ‘Perhaps I do – when you least expect it.’

  ‘Oh no. I just don’t think you know what laughter is. You’ve got to be concerned to laugh.’

  He sat for a while crouched over the fire, gazing at its slow brilliance. The room grew warm, and less strange. The fire had seemed strange, just because he had lit it. But he was at last absorbed by the familiarity of the room. I accepted him there. He held his hands together, near the flames, his fingers clenched together. ‘You try and see too much in me, Margaret. I’m a very simple man.’ He looked at me meaningfully, then suddenly came across and sat on the hearth rug. He leaned his back against the arm of the chair, and pressed his head against my legs. ‘You’re like some inarticulate woman who hires herself a preacher. Are you that sort of patroness?’

  ‘No.’

  I touched his head and held it beneath my hand. His hair was thick and luxurious. He stroked my legs as if he were ignorant of all my feelings.

  ‘Don’t you see what it means, to love somebody?’ he said sombrely.
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  His touch was urgent. He turned his head to look up at me.

  ‘I’ve tried to be what you wanted, Howarth.’

  ‘It’s not a sacrifice,’ he rebuked me.

  ‘It’s something I couldn’t do, to sort of rely on somebody … as if there were nothing else. It’d make me helpless like you, and I couldn’t bear that.’

  ‘You’ll have to accept me in the long run if you want any life at all. You can’t hide away and hope it won’t notice at all. Is it me that stops you? Is there something in me that puts you off?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What if I wasn’t married? What if I was a strapping young prince and not a doddering old king who already had a wife?’

  ‘No.’ I kissed him impulsively. His head rose stubbornly, straining to reach me.

  ‘It goes deeper, then,’ he said, looking closely at me. ‘I am a sort of conscience to you. You want me to experience all your feelings for you, while you stay tucked up safely in your castle.’

  ‘No, I don’t want that,’ I said miserably.

  ‘Shall we go upstairs, Margaret?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘If I like! Won’t you show any feeling for it?’ he said, flushing with anger. ‘Why do you make me do all the giving? You make me feel an intruder, as if I had no rights. You make it so furtive.’

  ‘I’ll go up, then. I’ll go up! What else do you want?’

  ‘No.’

  He stood up and went to sit at the table. He sat stiffly, his elbows on the table and his hands clenched to his mouth.

  ‘I’m going up,’ I said, and went upstairs.

  I undressed and waited in the bed for him. He was a long time in coming up. Then he came in and shut the door. The room seemed oppressed with both of us. The curtains billowed inwards, the daylight glowing in patterns on them. He pulled me up and held my shoulders. ‘Is this how you always want me? You on some altar and me pillaging it?’

  ‘I can’t do any more, Howarth.’

  He sat on the side of the bed. I wanted to touch him, but he was remote, as if his scars, his mood, his dilemma gave him that immunity.

  ‘I want you to love me, Howarth. I want it. But I can’t bear the thinking.’