Flight into Camden Read online

  ‘Yet you do nothing but think about it.’

  ‘Don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re putting all your uncertainty into me. As though I were the cause of it all.’

  But I lay back and waited for him. He undressed, tired and resigned.

  ‘It’s like an obligation to you,’ he went on. ‘A sense of duty or something. This is what you feel you should be ready to do.… But it’s nothing at all, really. It’s nothing.’

  He came under the sheets beside me, aching with his passion and resentment. I felt his body for him. He was steeled, withdrawing himself. But he submitted, tortured by his remoteness, and with no faith in him.

  It was darker when I woke, though there was still daylight behind the curtains. I could tell by the loudness of the voices across the backs that it was early evening. I looked at Howarth: his eyes were closed, his face peculiarly expressionless in sleep.

  There was something lifeless about the way his body rose and fell in breathing, as if it were automatic, sustained without him. But I was still afraid of him in the house. I listened for noises downstairs, imagining the unexpected return of my parents. The house was quiet; I liked the intimacy of the voices outside: the recognition of them so close, and yet both of us hidden.

  He stirred but didn’t wake when I slid out of bed and took my clothes into the bathroom to get dressed. The fire was almost out when I got down. Howarth might want to light the fire, but he wouldn’t want the trouble of keeping it in. There was something reckless about his sudden passions and wants and amusements. I built the fire up, and drew it with the shovel and newspaper.

  By the time the fire was roaring I had made some tea in the scullery. I filled my father’s pot and took it upstairs. Howarth was still sleeping. He had moved into the middle of the bed, his arms splayed out either side. I suddenly realized how he must have done without a great deal of sleep.

  But when I touched his shoulder he was instantly awake, staring up at me with a moment’s hesitation that frightened me, then smiling.

  ‘I’ve brought you some tea.’

  His eyes glowed. ‘That’s lovely,’ he said in a deep northern accent. ‘What can I give you in return?’ He took the pot and placed it carefully on the chair beside the bed and caught hold of my arms. ‘It was worth everything,’ he said.

  ‘I hope you won’t forget.’

  He stroked my back as he felt me shaking. ‘I’ll never forget anything like that.’ He drew himself away, watching me, confident and smiling. He lifted up the pot. ‘I look a real workman with this. You have a drink, then I’ll drink it.’

  I dipped my head over the huge pot. When my father let me drink out of it as a girl he used to laugh. He held the pot between his two thick hands and I stood between his thighs and folded my hands over his, drinking from the enormous interior while he leaned over me, laughing and holding me tightly, and heavy with his smell of coal and tobacco.

  Howarth laughed. Then he took the pot and drank, holding it in his right hand, his thumb slotted through the handle. ‘It’s lovely, here,’ he said, crouched up in the bed.

  ‘I’ll go down and cook something. It’s getting late.’

  ‘There’s no hurry for you.’ He stroked the pot between his hands, looking up at me. ‘That’s the first rest I’ve had for weeks,’ he said.

  ‘At least you’ll have a proper bed in that room of yours. You shouldn’t be looking so exhausted from now on.’

  ‘I wish you’d come back into bed.’

  ‘I’m going to cook something.’

  ‘You’re always rushing after things.’ He set the pot down as I stood up. ‘For a minute … just a minute. Won’t you come back?’

  ‘No. I’ve got things to do, even if you’ve only got to lie in bed.’

  ‘A minute …’ He stroked the bed beside him.

  ‘It’s no good you asking.’

  ‘Ah well.’ He settled down in the sheets. His body was big and brave in the small bed. ‘I’ll have to lie here and wait for you, then. I know you’ll come.’

  But soon after I’d started cooking I heard him moving about the bedroom. He didn’t like to be alone now. He came into the scullery and stood behind me, his arms round me, watching me cook.

  ‘I can’t do it when you’re like that,’ I told him.

  ‘Don’t then. I want you again.’

  ‘You spoil it.’

  He was wearied by the idea. He sat down on a wooden chair near the stove. ‘I’m feeling very hungry,’ he said.

  We stoked up the fire after the meal so that it would be bright and blazing when we came back in. We went out to the pictures. The air was cold. There were a few people about on the estate, and children played noisily in the small fields and wastegrounds between the rows of houses. It was a children’s landscape, the square houses set on the hillside like plain wooden blocks, everything reduced to a uniform size. As a child the estate had seemed infinite to me, but as I grew up it had gradually reduced itself, until when I was returning from holidays and absences I was surprised to see how really small and cut-off the whole thing was. But with Howarth it was large again, and warm and reassuring.

  He was at ease. I held my arm in his and he walked down the road with a careless rolling gait like a workman, calling good night to strangers with a calm politeness that made them turn their heads knowingly, in respect, when we’d gone.

  I felt at home in the local picture house, although it was full of people I knew. I met their amused curiosity with a smile or a nod. In the darkness we sat close together, yet with great propriety.

  When we got back we could see, from the road outside the house, the glow of the fire flickering on the curtains and the ceiling of the living-room. The whole front of the house seemed to glow, and spread its deep light on to the gardens and the road.

  Howarth locked the door, then shut the door of the living-room behind us.

  He watched me undressing, and watched again to see if I was ashamed and frightened. Then he came to hold me, standing in the blaze, red and glowing, with the room full of shaking lights and flickerings.

  ‘Do you mind it – undressing?’ he said.

  ‘No. I want to do it for you.’

  He felt my body bravely, running his hands over it lightly, full of curiosity and queer wisdom. ‘Let me undress you,’ I asked him.

  ‘If you will.’

  I ran my hands round him, feeling his chest and shoulders move. He stood close to me, his hands on my hips, watching my body and the way I looked at him. His shirt was small for him, and stretched in tight folds, clinging to him, and his tie hung limp. I kissed him, but he held my body away. ‘I’m waiting,’ he said, wanting to laugh and smile.

  ‘I don’t know whether I can.’

  ‘Are you frightened of it? Here – I’ll take my tie off for you.’

  ‘No.…’ I pulled his hand away and began undoing his tie, then the buttons of his shirt. He held me to him when my hands found his body. The shadows raced and danced about the room, climbing the walls and folding and unfolding on the ceiling. The fire crackled and fell, and a new burst of flames shot up. I pulled off his shirt and vest. His hands raced over my body, pressing hard and searchingly.

  He folded me in his arms and we knelt down together, the full heat of the fire burning close. He found my mouth and we clung together, and he lay back, taking me with him, until I was lying on top and he was pressing me down, into him.

  I pulled away and crouched over him. He reached up to my breasts with his mouth, his hands caught on my thighs. But he was wild. He writhed and called to me, on his back, and looking up with his eyes full of the firelight and the shadows. I felt for his trousers and unfastened the buttons, and pulled them down. Then he was reaching forward for me and pulling me into him with his wild intimacy. He locked me with him, and rolled from side to side, kissing me, clutching my thighs, and murmuring.

  He was sleepy and tired, exhausted with himself. We went upstairs when the fire faded. He laughed when
I covered myself to walk up the stairs. He walked nakedly, showing himself to ridicule me.

  I locked the bedroom latch, shutting everything out. He lay in the bed turned on his side, and I pressed to him, resting against his back, my arms wrapped round him. He was soon asleep. The house was quiet now, only the wood in the skirting board creaking, and the shallow whisper of his breathing.

  The estate had a religious silence about it at night, with the distant panting of trains beyond the town, and the close, harsh coughing of a consumptive, carried across the houses and the intervening patches of bare ground like an anonymous signal. But the stillness was strange. As I fell asleep I could still hear the wood creaking and the gurgling of the water in the pipes, and the weary rattle of coughing, dreary and subsiding to a whimpered exhaustion.

  Sunday was a bright day. The sunlight came coldly through the green curtain. I was warm, my hands tight and warm between his thighs. I didn’t want to be awake. I curled up to him in the narrow bed. I tried to force myself to sleep.

  But the brightness of the day and the thought of my parents’ return frightened me. Howarth was awake. He tried to grip my hands with his thighs when I slid away, then he watched me dressing, as he always did, minutely, as if continually surprised.

  Then he leaned out of bed and pulled me back, holding me so madly and strongly I couldn’t move and I almost cried out in pain. He made love to me coldly. I was glad of it. I wanted it never ending, with the warmth and the feeling and the forgetting. It was the end of everything, yet everything still went on. It was the going-on and the ending that I wanted always there, feeling him in me, the moving and the thoughtlessness.

  I lay beneath him miserable that he was spent, but glad to feel him struggling for his sensation. When he was finished he was really exhausted. I touched him but he wouldn’t revive. He lay back, his eyes closed, with no power in him; as if I had fought him and beaten him.

  I got up and pulled the bedclothes from him. He lay there naked and limp, watching me through half-closed eyes. ‘Well. What do you know?’ he asked.

  I knelt on the bed beside him and felt his stomach and his chest and his shoulders. I rubbed my cheek against him, and kissed his stomach and his hips, looking up at him and smiling knowingly. ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ he said, as though I’d been telling him. I stroked his legs and his sides, to his arms.

  ‘Now you’ve got me,’ he said, smiling down at me. I crouched by his stomach holding him. ‘Just like a cat.’ He stroked my hair, pressing his fingers into my scalp reprovingly. I kissed his body, laying my head against it, and he stretching out. ‘I’m not asking too much,’ I told him, looking up to his face, then putting out my hand and stroking the bristle round his cheeks.

  He caught my hand and held it and kissed it, folded the fingers and gave it back to me, laughing. ‘Now you can keep it,’ he said. He crouched up in the bed, turning against me.

  I got up and dressed properly, and washed. I made the fire and cooked our breakfasts. The house was our own. I loved him away in the bedroom, waiting while I cooked. My parents could never come back at all. They were intruders. I couldn’t imagine them ever again in the house. We’d taken it away, and it no longer was theirs.

  When the meal was laid out I went back to wake Howarth. He was lying with his hands clasped behind his head, staring at the cracked ceiling.

  ‘I shall get a divorce,’ he said, turning to look at me. ‘I’ll go and see her on my day off this week and tell her.’

  ‘You never told me you had a day off in the week,’ I said, strangely, as if he’d hidden something of importance from me.

  ‘Didn’t I? But then I haven’t told you a lot of things. It’s hardly important, is it?’

  ‘No.’ He thought I was sulking; he tapped me under the chin and said, ‘Smile, Margaret.…’

  I smiled at his earnestness and he laughed too. ‘Why don’t you laugh at me more often?’ he said.

  ‘You’d better be getting up,’ I told him. ‘I want the house straight before my parents come back.’

  ‘Oh yes. We must cover up all the evidence.’

  ‘That’s a petty sort of bravado.’

  ‘No … you mustn’t say anything. I’ll help you. Just tell me what to do.’

  ‘You can get dressed and have your breakfast. I’ll clean up everything in here. Then we’ll go out somewhere.’

  ‘Somewhere.’ He looked up at the curtains filtering the light. ‘It suddenly sounds very empty.’

  He’d tidied up the living-room before I got down from making the bed, and had kept the breakfasts hot on the gas ring. I could see where he’d neatly replaced the chair covers, straightened the rugs, shaken the cushions. But nevertheless I knew my mother would recognize the minute difference. She could even tell, coming into the room, which one of her family had last touched the cushions or sat in a chair.

  When we walked down the road to catch the bus I knew it would be too obvious to the neighbours, but I didn’t care. Howarth was aloof. He was so preoccupied I threatened to leave him, pulling my arm from his and beating his shoulder.

  ‘I feel it’s going to be ages before I can get a divorce,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want you to talk about it.’

  ‘Aren’t you interested?’ he said in deep surprise, and flushing.

  ‘No. You won’t understand, but I don’t care what you do.’

  ‘What if I go back to her?’

  ‘You won’t. And I don’t care.’

  ‘Aye. You’re too damn sure,’ he said, wanting to laugh. ‘You’ve been too sure all the time … underneath. Right from the start.’

  ‘Does it hurt you?’

  ‘No. I don’t mind.’

  We caught a bus up to Fleeingwood Park. It was crowded with Sunday strollers in spite of the cool wind. They walked along by the lake, and gathered round the aviary. I liked to be with him in the crowd, to hold his arm and people to see us.

  He was worried, and listened to me talking without interrupting. When we stopped to sit down by the lake he went to the water’s edge. I sat back and watched his still figure like a giant, contemplative bird, his raincoat hanging loosely from his shoulders, his hands sunk in his pockets. Beyond him, across the lake, rose a thick bank of trees, their branches almost bare, and heavy against the water, leaning down. In their summits were the remnants of rooks’ nests, and some of the birds glided over the trees, but never near the water. The surface of the lake was brown with rotted leaves, floating on top or submerging. Along the bank children were throwing bread to the ducks, and to a tall, dignified swan, sulking and swimming to and fro. The reflections of the trees were like wrecks in the water.

  The children didn’t disturb Howarth. They moved round him and past him but he didn’t raise his head. He came back very tired. He wanted to tell me, but he sat silent, looking across the lake to the bony barricade of trees.

  ‘Do you think you love me?’ he said.

  We looked at one another swiftly, almost contemptuous. ‘You think I shouldn’t ask you.’ The blood ran into his face.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by love. You must take me as I am, that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Will you go away with me, then?’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘London.’

  His eyes were almost indifferent. I avoided their expression: the concealing and carelessness. ‘Why should I go there?’

  ‘We can be together.’

  ‘I don’t know whether I want to be alone with you … with no one else there, to turn to.’

  ‘Not until the divorce is through,’ he suggested.

  ‘That’s nothing to do with it, Howarth. And you know it.’

  ‘Why don’t you ever call me by my name?’ he said with a pained seriousness.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I looked away from him.

  ‘It’s strange, is that.’

  ‘I don’t like calling people by their names if they mean something to me.’

  ‘How do you t
hink of me, then? What name do you connect me with?’

  ‘Just Howarth. But it’s not odd … I’ve done it before. As it is, you don’t like your Christian name.’

  ‘Will you think of going away with me? I shall have to go. I couldn’t stay on up here, it’d be like carrying on a leftover life.’ There was a certain weakness in his tone. He resented it, and tried to garble his words, twisting the pitch of his voice. I despised him for making me see something abject in him. I wanted nothing to do with his situation, only him.

  ‘I might come away with you,’ I said. ‘But if you rely on me then I won’t. If you expected me to go then I couldn’t do it. I’d feel as though I’d owed it to you. You’ll not have to press me.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, standing up alertly and very quietly. ‘I’m going to London just before the term ends. If you want to come I’ll look for you.’

  ‘But aren’t you going to see me …?’

  ‘I can’t, can I?’ He was angry, the colour mounting in his face. ‘It’s only three weeks and I’ll find something to do. I’ll let you know when I’m leaving. I’m not going to beg you.’

  He walked away quickly, moving so hurriedly through the crowd that people looked after him, then back at me, furtively. I didn’t move, but went on watching the brown stillness of the lake, assuring myself that I hadn’t been deserted.

  7

  ‘Is that why you came back, then?’ my mother said quietly. ‘Just so you could have that man in here.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have mattered to me if I had. I don’t care what the neighbours think.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a very old one indeed,’ she said, her anger rising. ‘But I do care. We’ve to go on living here, woman, long after you’ve gone gallivanting off.’

  I sat at the tea table, unable to eat; wondering why my father should stay in bed. It was only two days since the Sunday, and I hadn’t got used to them in the house, and I was missing Howarth.

  ‘Why did you do it, Margaret?’ she pleaded, softening, and sitting down at the table. ‘You know you can’t bring a man back here when you’re in by yourself. You can’t do it without everybody knowing. And yet you do it so brazenly, when everybody knew we were away.’