Flight into Camden Read online

  ‘I don’t ever want to see her. If you go I’d rather you did it quickly.’

  He went the following week-end, as if he’d been waiting a long time for this opportunity. I wasn’t sure why he went. There was something more to it than just the need to convince her.

  I saw him off at Kings Cross still full of the memory of my father’s departure: both of us were afraid of the separation, of what there was in it that we couldn’t see. For a moment, after the train had gone, disappearing sickeningly into that great tunnel, I thought I’d never see him again. I sobbed wildly as I walked down the platform, with a sudden and brief hysteria: by the time I reached the barrier I was calm. He was making every effort to come back that night, and I knew he meant it. I filled in the day as best I could, walking about town, afraid of waiting alone in that empty flat.

  In the evening I went back, and turned the wireless up loudly to hide all the sounds from outside. All the time I was listening for the creak of his footsteps in the well of the house. At eleven he hadn’t appeared. I went out and caught a trolley down to Kings Cross and waited for the last evening train. I searched the crowd carefully, sensing he wouldn’t be there. But it tired me. When I got back to the flat I was able to sleep without a wakeful torment.

  In the morning there was the familiar deadness of Sunday in the air. The street was silent, the house made no sound.

  I cooked my breakfast slowly, desperate at the thought of filling in the whole day, wondering if he might have caught a morning train, if in fact he was already on the way, speeding towards London; wondering where he had slept. I was pulling at him; he was a weight inside me, drawing at my body with that dead, tearing dullness. I ached for him. Everything was waiting for him, needing his noise and smell and sight. The buildings waited. The street, still mounded with rubbish from the previous day’s market, was empty and still. He would come up it. I hurried about trying to fill the silence.

  But he invaded everything.

  I dreaded him coming, the shock. I wanted it over, without the doubt of his waiting. I filled the morning with a score of unnecessary jobs, turning the wireless loud for ‘The Archers’ so that I could hear it in the kitchen; even cleaning the outside grime of the windows, and sitting over my diary unable to write a word. I couldn’t bring myself to the boredom of reading the Sunday newspapers: they were a weariness in themselvesfi overfull and bloated. There was the same deadness about them. They filled the flat with their unread neatness. I watched out of the window for him, and saw him turn the corner several times. Each time I burned at the resemblance, flaming with the disappointment. And at lunch time, unable to cook a meal just for myself, I caught a trolley to Kings Cross and waited for the arrival of the afternoon trains. They were three hours apart, the next one not arriving until the early evening.

  I left the station and caught a bus outside to Greenwich. It was a long rambling journey, through the fringe of the City and across the river. But I tolerated the bus: it was an imprisonment sitting there. I raged at myself for this helplessness, determined that I’d never let Howarth leave me again. I hated him for this. I exploded against him, raging at his callousness, hating and writhing at him for his indifference. I choked, and burned at him. I struggled up the steep hill of the park, pained with the effort of moving. My body had no will to move. But I scrambled up the hill as unseeingly as I’d scrambled up the cutting at Lindley Ponds, hating him.

  I walked down with long, aching strides, sitting in the bus unable to keep still, changing seats while I waited for the bus to leave. The journey back was better. I hated him less. We were coming together now, rushing towards one another, to meet one another. I hugged and kissed him, and laughed with him. The bus sensed our closeness, rushing on through the late afternoon streets towards the City as if it too belonged to Howarth, to the completeness of him. My body leapt inside itself, glowing and throbbing as we neared Kings Cross in a darkening river mist.

  There were thirty minutes to wait. I bought a Sunday paper and read it enjoyably, looking up occasionally from the pleasure of the full print to the even greater pleasure of the clock. The engine came in slowly, as if afraid of the station. It nosed its way down the groove of the station so cautiously, like a shy lover. The crowd teemed out of the carriages, the porters standing like markers, engulfed, the length of the platform. I looked first for Howarth’s fair hair amongst the denseness of the crowd: I saw it, recognizing him with a raging heat inside my chest. The sense of him burned me. But he didn’t appear. The crowd thinned, trickling down from the back of the train, meeting relatives with a short, eager intensity. The train had emptied.

  I went to the indicator board and found the arrival of the next northern train. It arrived late in the evening. I couldn’t think of anywhere to go. I was maimed by Howarth’s desertion. I couldn’t move without him. There was nowhere to go: the flat no longer belonged to me. I came out of the station and saw the cinema opposite. I went in and bought the cheapest ticket: a wooden seat in the gallery. It was a converted music-hall; the crowd was young, and a left-over from the hall’s vulgar days. They called out their obscenities at the old films, making crude noises with their mouths, going on and on almost dolefully, by habit, hardly aware of themselves, just calling at the screen.

  I endured it, cowering in the narrow seat as if the abuse were directed at me. I couldn’t see a clock. The attendant flashed his light ineffectually at them. I thought of the outside of the cinema all the time, the growing darkness, the mistiness, the deep premature red of the lamps. The film frightened me by its incoherence, the senseless passage of events, the steady reverberation of obscenities, louder and louder. On the screen people were kissing, and the noises and screams were now almost hysterical, a crescendo; and the lights flashing, and the shouting. The people kissing.

  When I came out the street was ghostly and the silence of it deafening. I went across to the station and waited for the train. I hated relying on the place, on its brickiness. And I was already afraid of the engine as it coasted in, slow as before, with the same reluctance, seemingly the same black engine, the same deserting crowd flooding towards the barrier. The shouts of the cinema throbbed in my head. I didn’t want to look for him; I searched half-heartedly, standing where I knew he must see me. The crowd thinned; there were bursts of greeting amongst the waiting people, intimate explosions. The engine stood close to me, black-nosed, gleaming, steaming uselessly. I waited in the hope of having missed him, then hurried out to the trolley-bus stop. No one waited there either.

  The trolley came and I got on. It purred up to Camden like a dead thing, tugged by habit on a string. I rushed up the street to the flat, suddenly sure that he was there. I knew he was. I could hear the wireless playing as I came up the stairs. I pushed open the door already laughing at him. The emptiness yawned at me. I knocked open the door of the kitchen: it was as I’d left it. When I touched the wireless it was hot. It had been playing to itself all day, emptily filling the room, filling the house. I turned it off, lying down on the bed in despair.

  I wanted to go out for a meal, but I was too exhausted. Everything was useless now but the waiting. I had to be still and wait. There was no rushing about. I listened to the house, lying on the bed waiting for the sound of him. The house seemed to empty itself. The wireless had driven everything out throughout the day. Its electric heat and burnt rubber filled the room. I cried for a long time, urging myself to it, shuddering for his body and his touch. I undressed and got into bed and cried again. I hated him. I hated him now more than I’d ever done. My body throbbed with it, my legs aching with hate, my face burning. I needed to kill him. I needed him dead and absolutely destroyed. I burned everything that was him in my mind. My body was shattered and flung apart by its desire.

  I woke early. I looked forward to seeing him. I couldn’t go to work. It wasn’t even important to ring up and tell them I was ill. I lay in bed until it was late, watching the pale sunlight and the slow heaving of the clouds over the street. I felt
hungry. I cooked myself a good breakfast, cooking it slowly, talking to myself, as if for a stranger who would inspect it. I took every consideration with it. It was no more to me than that I should please the stranger and do my very best. I watched him carefully as he considered my work. I ate it with the stranger’s relish, enjoying every mouthful, lingering over it to read the newspaper. I tidied the flat again. The day lengthened. I was determined not to go down to Kings Cross. The burning slowly returned with the noises and the bustle in the street. I felt sick at having eaten. I couldn’t bring myself to clear the table, to touch anything. My hands were lifeless. I waited for the sound of him, feverishly at first, then with complete silence, sitting in the chair in the middle of the room. Each sound on the stairs burned me. I longed to go and see, to rush out into the street and see him before he reached the door, then to the corner to see him before he reached there, then to the station to enjoy the surprise and longing of his arrival.

  I clung rigidly to the chair. Footsteps rose through the house, ascending to the door, passing, and clambering upstairs. Footsteps descending. The outside passed by. The inside raged. I hated him. My legs and arms ached. His nearness, his absence inflamed me. I clung to the chair, vehement at my stillness. I waited with the bricks and the stones; everything was in flames if he didn’t come soon, the sound of him. Nothing moved from me. It clung to me. My body was racked with the burning. Then it shattered, leaping wildly apart. There were his quick footsteps on the stairs, coming up interminably. Rising and rising. The house rose with his ascent, creaking with it. He opened the door and stared at me strangely, half surprised.

  I stayed still, calm, smiling at his arrival. I loved him for his presence, for the vision of him. He was old and famous to me. More familiar than anything in the world.

  ‘I thought there was something the matter,’ he said, suddenly smiling and holding up an envelope. ‘You haven’t picked up my letter downstairs.’

  ‘I only went down for the papers, before the post came,’ I told him quietly.

  He looked at me shyly. He didn’t ask me why I wasn’t at work. I was aware for the first time that I’d dressed myself in my best clothes. The surprise livened me. He put down his bag and shut the door. He came across and knelt by the chair, suddenly feeling my body. I leapt up in flames at him, flinging my arms round him and crying out, gripping him with all my shocked strength. He hugged and rolled me against him, murmuring and caressing. There had never been such greatness before. His touch bemused me, the smell and warmth of him, until all my aching was absorbed in him, and we were together.

  ‘What is it?’ I said, as he got dressed to take me out for the evening. His quietness was meant to impress me. I went and put my arms round him as he tried to pull on his shirt. He laughed and tried to shrug off my embrace, but I clung to him, feverishly prolonging his warmth.

  ‘You haven’t even asked me how I got on,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t care.’

  He smiled soberly, looking down at me from beneath his lowered brows. He hadn’t shaved for two days. I ran my fingers over his lovely, fair bristle. It was almost invisible.

  ‘Come on. You’ve had enough,’ he complained, drawing his head away. ‘I want to talk.’

  ‘I’m not stopping you talking,’ I said, still holding him and grinning at his massive helplessness. He tried to push my hands down hopelessly, then shrugged.

  ‘Oh, if you don’t want to hear what she said.’

  ‘But you’d better tell me.’

  I let him go and he sat down on the bed. I fetched his shoes, and knelt down and fitted his small feet into the clumsy shapes, pulling the laces tightly, securing them.

  ‘It was just about a waste of time,’ he said, watching my hands intently as if they were his own. ‘It only gave her a chance to let her mouth off.’

  ‘I could have told … I knew she’d be just like that.’

  ‘You were very noisy about it, then, for you never told me.’

  ‘I had to let you find out for yourself. You don’t believe she’s scheming. You won’t believe me when I tell you.’

  ‘She won’t give me a divorce.… At least, she says that now. It might be different in a year …’ He moved his feet inside his shoes, undulating the bright leather and turning up the toes: he enjoyed them. I kissed them, wanting to touch him all the time, weak with it, my head faint.

  ‘You spent all that time up there just finding that out.’

  ‘I went to see Ben, and Fawcett too. And I dropped in at the college.’

  ‘Oh, Howarth. You are a big fool. You shout about them one minute, and you go cap in hand the next.’

  ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t see them.’

  He sat quietly, nursing the sensations of his visit.

  ‘I’m glad you went.’

  ‘Why?’ He looked at me with simple, relieved curiosity.

  ‘I didn’t know I’d miss you. It makes things clearer to me.’

  ‘Did you miss me?’ He watched me closely, stooping towards me.

  ‘How long did you see your wife for?’

  ‘I saw her twice. Saturday and Sunday. I spent the whole of yesterday arguing with her.…’

  ‘Will you ever become aware of people, Howarth?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ He was offendedly amused.

  ‘You’re such an awful judge of people. You never see them clearly for more than a moment. I’m sure … and that’s because you’re always wanting to see what you want in them.’

  ‘You think that Joyce is playing around with me?’

  ‘Does she still love you?’

  ‘She wants me to go back to her. That’s all I know.’

  ‘You aren’t sure about her at all, are you? What did you go up for?… Didn’t you make her see that it’s hopeless for her to hang on like this?’

  ‘Her idea is that if she waits long enough I’ll go back to her.’

  ‘What did you say to that?’

  ‘What could I say? She believes it.… She wants to believe it, so she does.’

  ‘We can admire her confidence if nothing else.’ I gave a sound of despair and moved away from him. He gazed keenly at my clothes, then at my face.

  ‘Don’t fight her, Margaret. You were right at the beginning to have nothing to do with her, so let’s keep it that way.’

  ‘But she’s fighting me. Aren’t I supposed to do anything?’

  ‘Just be what you are.’

  ‘What is it that makes a woman like me live with a man I can’t marry? A year ago I’d have shuddered at the thought. But now …’

  ‘It’s no good having those sorts of thoughts, looking backwards all the time.’

  ‘I’m looking outwards, not backwards. Can you be as indifferent to these things as you’re trying to believe?’

  ‘I endured the sight of my children.’ He still sat facing me, glancing occasionally at his shoes, and moving his feet in them. ‘They were so pleased to see me.’

  He loosened his collar with a quick, impetuous action, and went into the kitchen to shave.

  When he came back I was ready with my coat on, waiting for him. ‘Did you want to leave them?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded confidently at me. ‘I was glad to leave them.’

  ‘Because it would have been too much to stay longer?’

  ‘Yes.’ But he wasn’t sure what he meant.

  His visit north pleased him where I was concerned. Looking back, he enjoyed the thought of me waiting, and the new response in me since his return. ‘Did you miss me a lot?’ he kept asking, provoking me, amused and pleased with himself. He was beside himself to console me. He indulged in it for several days.

  Later, when I asked him how long his wife would keep him waiting, he said, ‘She thinks she’s the one who’s doing the waiting. Still … she is so practical, she must surely begin to see sense in a year.… She’ll come to terms, don’t worry.’

  ‘Will you marry me as soon as your divorce comes through?’

/>   ‘Yes. As soon as ever I can.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be falling from one trap into another?’

  ‘Are you a trap as well?’ he asked with veiled innocence.

  He had settled down at school to a quiet, concealable disillusion. The Headmaster had praised his work, and he tried hard not to be unhappy in it. One evening he brought home a young Welsh teacher who taught Maths and P.T. in the school. Between them they unfolded a miasma of horror and disgusting detail that comprised their daily life. Howarth was reluctant to confess it, ashamed that he’d exposed it to me in this way. With the two of them together, and listening to them, I saw Howarth’s teaching slowly eroding his spirit. His inner hardness seemed exactly the measure of that reduction.

  ‘We must be child-men to be able to deal with them at their level,’ the Welshman said. ‘Any person of feeling or intelligence wouldn’t even understand them. And worst of all, they wouldn’t understand either feeling or intelligence.’

  ‘They’re human,’ Howarth said.

  ‘That’s not our bloody fault. They don’t serve any use by being either human or alive.’

  Howarth smiled at him bleakly, as he might have done at Ben, or Fawcett. ‘Why do you teach them, then?’ he asked.

  ‘I was sent there, man. I was given no option.’

  ‘You can leave.’

  ‘And be sent to another asylum? I’ve been educated, I have. But what for, man? Just to paste the lugs of those lousy shits?’

  ‘Everybody at that school’s like you,’ Howarth said. ‘I don’t know why you do it.’

  ‘Not everybody.… Look at Jackson. He’s the best teacher there. And why? Because he’s small-minded. He makes them stand up when he comes in. He sees that their hands are clean, that their pen nibs aren’t bent, that they walk out of the left side of the desk, that they sit up when they’re not writing. That they call him “sir”. You’ve got to be small-minded to spend all your life doing that sort of thing. If you want to be a good schoolteacher you’ve got to have a mind the size of a peanut. You just haven’t a cat in hell’s chance if you don’t.’