Their grey felt hats could be distorted into the sort that Napoleon wore. Porridge at breakfast was sometimes burnt, often cold as well. They were taken blackberrying in the autumn, to get sufficient for jam the whole year. Church was twice on Sunday, and there was Scripture every morning. Each summer they lived in tents for a week by the seaside. Occasionally they walked the streets, and felt like kings.
If his grandfather had hoped to punish him by sending him to an orphanage because his mother had committed the unforgivable sin of giving him birth, then the old man had not succeeded. Rather the opposite, Tom supposed, for to be brought up in such a family would obviously have been many times worse. The one blow he had been dealt, which was so savage that he preferred to put it down to an act of God rather than to any that man could have given, was when he had been deprived of his picture-card album. Even that, considering how quickly he had forgotten it, seemed to have concerned another boy and not him.
In any case, there were other blows to smooth the way to forgetfulness. Never, he recalled it being said at the orphanage, sit with your hands clenched – as by the age of six it had grown to be his habit. When he had done so, once too often for his safety, a cane had smashed across his knuckles. From then on his fingers had remained straight, even when relaxed. But who could now say, he thought, remembering such sharp teaching for the first time in years, that they had ever since been at rest?
On the inside of the album it said in Clara’s handwriting: ‘When you think of your mother, say a prayer for her soul.’ Of all he had seen and read in this morass of tormenting mementoes, these words struck his eyes as if to blind him. Rage spread to the very tips inside his fingers, so that his hands would not stay still from pain. He tore the page from its staples, and crushed it like a poisonous spider.
PART FIVE
Love
1
‘You look as though you’ve been down a coalmine.’
‘I wish I had. It would undoubtedly have been cleaner down there.’
‘Do you feel bitter?’ she asked, after he had related his findings.
He picked up his grandfather’s death certificate, tore it casually in half, and let it drop. ‘Everybody’s gone, so how can I? Getting to know your past for the first time at fifty makes you feel young again, but without the hope you might once have had.’
He pushed a box under the table with his foot. The curtains were closed and all lights on. The shelf clock struck midnight. Traffic noises came from the seafront. She drew the velvet curtains to one side and saw three ships lit up on the sea. When he pulled a book towards him she looked over his shoulder. ‘What kind of writing is that?’
The letters were solid and black, as if they would remain long after the paper had disappeared. They lay in packed lines from top to bottom of the large page. ‘It’s Hebrew,’ he said, ‘the writing of the Jews.’
‘How do you know?’
‘There was once a radio officer who had a theory that the British people were one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. He read the Bible, and was learning Hebrew. I saw him practising the script.’
‘Can you read any?’
He ran a finger from right to left across the lines. ‘It’s all Chinese to me. But I suppose my mother must have known what it was.’
She touched his shoulder. ‘You’ll have to learn.’
His features were bare and prominent under the light, and he stared at the writing as if the meaning would be made clear, like trying to read hopeful signs in the weather from gathering clouds. She had never seen anyone who seemed so tired, so emptied. There was nothing in him to make life livable except the spirit of his inner self that might or might not revive. Even the sea had gone from him, all the strength he had acquired with so much effort and will. He looked up from the print. ‘I must begin again, unless I’m to die. There’s no other way. I have no option.’
He had been on a longjourney, and had told her about it in order to decide what of value would be preserved from the rubble of the past. She had been of some use, and was glad. One good turn deserved another. What more could he want from her? But she didn’t care to get into a situation from which she might lose the desire to escape. If she began such a life again she would die in captivity. ‘I think I have to go home.’
He jumped as if stung. ‘Home?’
She was frightened at beginning to feel that she lived here. ‘Back to London. I must have some clean clothes at least!’
‘It’s too late to get a train. I’m afraid I lost count of time, which is strange, considering how obsessed I’ve always been by it. When I first studied navigation I discovered that there were ten different kinds of time. I’d chant the words to get them into my brain: solar, apparent solar, mean solar, sidereal, lunar, standard, summer, Greenwich Mean, watch and chronometer time. Lives depended on them perhaps, and to lose track of time seems either a disaster or a luxury – I don’t know which. Searching through oceans of vacant time with landmarks that I’d either forgotten or not known about made me lose all sense of something I thought even my bone-marrow was made of.’
He wanted to sleep, but felt that his body would never rest again, that his brain would fragment and he’d spend the rest of his life raving like a madman at the conspiratorial emptiness of the world. He ached as if his joints were giving way. ‘It’s shameful to ramble on like this, but I can’t feel any good reason not to. I can’t help myself. I never met anybody before who I was able to talk to.’
‘Talk, then,’ she said, thinking anyone would serve. She would listen for as long as he could go on, because he was a person stricken down, and she already knew the symptoms.
‘I don’t want you to leave, train or no train. If I spend the night here with the ghosts I’ve just rumbled, and wake up to face the morning alone, I might do something I won’t even live to regret. I don’t know who I am, though I know I don’t belong here. Not even in this country. There’s nothing for me to stay for. Until I know where I want to be, I won’t know who I am. I’ve seen most places, but the vital one has eluded me. When I see the name I’ll know it. I’ll know what it is, and what I am, when it comes. It’s been a long wait so far, but no time is too long, because if you die before you get there at least you haven’t made a false choice! There’s a hand in the way things have turned out that’s not my doing, or anybody else’s either, and everything indicates that I should leave here, and the fact that I’ve no idea where to go isn’t important. Moving over the world in the last thirty years has been the same as standing still, but now the real move ought to begin. Not only my own, but some other voice tells me it must.’
‘It’s as good a way of making up your mind as any.’ She wanted him to stop talking, because his eyes, from looking firmly at some point beyond, were turned even more intently on her.
‘I’ve used all methods of making up my mind,’ he said, ‘of deciding when to alter course to avoid danger or reach clear water, but what mattered was always suggested by a force outside myself, which isn’t a way I like, but there’s little you can do except ride it as you ride the waves – when they let you.’
He opened a smaller volume from the pile of books. The same Hebrew script on one page faced English on the other. ‘Perhaps one of my long voyages would have led me to puzzle the language out. I’d have got a key and navigated my way through it line by line. The reason Aunt Clara didn’t tell me anything was because she thought I shouldn’t be deflected from my simple life. She didn’t send one of my mother’s Hebrew books because she wanted to keep her sister’s things close to herself. Who needs questions? I want answers, but they’re safe inside me and won’t come out, nicely marbled together like stones on a beach, all numbered and precisely catalogued – or they will be soon enough.’
They stood. She would find a blanket and sleep on the wide sofa. ‘You should go to bed.’
He held her gently. ‘Without you I wouldn’t be able to breathe.’
She smiled at his close face. ‘Any other person would hav
e been just as useful.’
He shook his head. ‘Two people like us have been through enough to know that we met in the way we did because neither of us is just any other person. Everything is ordered in the universe, as far as the length of a human life is concerned. When you find your latitude and longitude by heavenly bodies at sea they’re always in the place in which you expect to find them. They never let you down. Nothing is left to chance. We’re individuals, like the billions of stars. But fate is the great leveller, and all is fixed. No other person would have done but you.’
She put her hands on his shoulders. ‘I’m even more exhausted than you look, believe it or not, and would like to get some sleep. But I must go to London tomorrow, because I have unfinished business there.’
‘I’ll go with you.’ He surprised her by a light kiss on the lips. She regretted moving away because she did not know the reason for it. He stood like an island. ‘I’ll give up my room in town, then move down here.’
He took her unwarranted shift from him as one of those blows of life that you must always be braced to expect. He poured two glasses of whisky, his normal tone making her happy to be with him again. ‘Maybe these’ll do for nightcaps!’
‘I feel frightened about going back to London.’ What was she saying? How can I confide in him like this? ‘It’s something I can’t explain.’
‘It’s when you don’t feel dread that something dreadful really happens.’
‘I wish I could believe that,’ she said.
‘So why go?’ It would be impossible not to. She felt as if pulled by the scruff of the neck. He drank his whisky, then poured another. ‘Learn to follow your heart.’
‘Have you?’ A bit too sharp, she felt. Still, he shouldn’t say words he couldn’t mean. ‘Don’t drink any more after that.’ She sat down. ‘I have things to settle. My husband wants me to go back to him.’
After a few moments he said: ‘Well?’
‘I shan’t. He’s been in London with his three brothers. They’ve found out where I live.’
He laughed. ‘Are they such dangerous monsters?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ She couldn’t, until what she dreaded happened. They were known more clearly by her than any other group of people, yet their presence threatened her with the unknown, to which she couldn’t trust herself not to respond.
‘Get rid of your room as well,’ he said.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, wryly.
‘Why not?’
She moved towards him, then stopped. ‘I like it there because it was my first refuge from a life I couldn’t stand, and from the rest of the world that made me think I was a fool for not feeling I was the luckiest person. I can’t let my husband or my own fears drive me out, so I must get a job and exist on my own.’
‘Being a sailor has taught me,’ he said, ‘that no one can live without other people. The independence you’re thinking about is only possible providing you don’t want to stay human. I’ve been in and out of that state all my life, but never for too long.’
He was accusing her. After trying to stay silent, she said: ‘I’m the only one who knows what’s good for me.’
‘Yes, I realize that. But we did meet under rather peculiar circumstances.’
She didn’t like being reminded, and wondered whether she really was lucky to be alive. Where was she? Who was she with? The room was dimly lit. She wanted to see everything with eye-aching clarity. What had been revealed during the day had pushed her life to one side, but now that it was coming back there was nothing promising about it. Only the effort she would have to make appealed to her, because there was no other way of knowing she was alive. ‘The light’s too low.’
He went to the switches, and the table lamps turned dim in the white dazzle from overhead. ‘Is that better?’
She nodded. It was different.
‘I’ve been thinking of putting an advertisement in the newspaper,’ he said. ‘It’ll go something like this …’ He reached for a pencil and spoke the words as he scribbled: ‘Woman aged thirty to fifty wanted as personal secretary and assistant to help ex-Merchant Marine officer with business affairs. Possibility of travel. Must be independent. Ability to drive an advantage. Fair salary offered. Living-in optional. Own television if desired.’
He passed her the paper. ‘I don’t want to deprive you of your previous freedom, but you have first refusal of this dazzling situation!’
The writing was impossible to read. She would be nobody’s servant. To go to an office every morning from her own room and work for a business firm would be acceptable, but to be a runabout for someone with whom she was friendly was not her notion of a proper job.
‘There’s work to be done,’ he said, ‘but the hours will be irregular, though you’ll get enough time off. You already know what the premises are like. You’ll have a room here, and be absolutely private, I promise you. I know you already, and I like you, though I’ll say no more about that. Maybe you know what I’m trying to say, in any case. And I might not get anyone who’d fit the job even if I did advertise. I’m not trying to do you a favour, as much as one for myself.’
She wanted to say yes, but such a way out of her dilemma would be too easy. It would be wrong to take advantage of his loneliness and incoherence. She felt close, yet separated from him as by a high wall. ‘I’m helping you already, so why do we need a contract?’
He smiled at her simple notion of the truth. You sign on for the voyage and sign off at the end. Old habits led him to expect regularity. The signature was everything. Such articles were the nuts and bolts of a disciplined service, but they obviously had no place in love. Compartments were not divided by watertight doors, below the Plimsoll Line or not. Now that he had found her he couldn’t bear the prospect of being alone, but considering the way they had met there was no certainty of her remaining. Such unpredictability disturbed him. But she hadn’t said no, and he would have to be satisfied with that.
2
Her watch said half-past nine and for a few moments she wondered where she was. She had forgotten to get a pillow with her two blankets, and by the time she had undressed and lain down she was too sleepy to look for one. What would George say if he knew she had spent the night in another man’s flat – and ended up with a stiff neck? Maybe one of his brothers had followed them to Brighton and, posted outside, observed that she had been there all night, and that she had – he could hardly deduce otherwise with his kind of mind – slept with him. Let him think. She wondered why she hadn’t. He’d surely expected her to. She liked him enough, and could easily imagine how pleasant it might have been, but she had been too exhausted, either to allow any move or make one.
She pushed a curtain aside. A gleaming estate car with its lights on moved around the square. Neither of the two pedestrians resembled George or his brothers. The bleak sea was ruffled with feather-tops. She came back to the couch. Yesterday had been like ten years, but as time going in reverse, so that she felt a decade younger. It was as if she had already spent a honeymoon which had been perfect and glorious: she had come out of a long tunnel, exhausted but unhurt, and with a strange feeling of happiness. She looked out of the window again. The car had found a space and parked.
She emptied her bag to get clean pants and a blouse. Having expected him to sleep most of the day, she scooped up her clothes and went to the bathroom. The door was locked. He called that he wouldn’t be long. Using her coat for a dressing-gown she went to the lavatory, then into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Not being used to alcohol, her head ached, and her mouth was dry from thirst. She thought of what she knew about him. He was a man, as they said, with a past. So was she, and it was called prison, a long slumber of the unknowing until the bars were suddenly behind instead of in front, and never to be stepped back into by returning to someone of George’s sort. They had to cut free.
She resisted singing in her freedom. She was with another man. She liked being with him. She was sparing with words, even with herself,
yet didn’t want to care. She swung open the huge curtains. An enormous patch of sun from the sea warmed her face. There was no movement in the square. They hadn’t traced her, after all. She would stay for as long as it wasn’t the beginning or the end of anything, but knew she mustn’t hope for too much.
The kettle whistled. Before it reached full shriek he had taken it off and was opening the tea caddy. He was dressed, with tie on, face shaved, shoes polished, fresh-looking as if he had slept deeply, looking different to last night when his agonized face in the shadowy light had given age no chance to mark his features. He seemed free of whatever weight the long search through his aunt’s leavings had heaped on him, though on a further glance she noticed that more than a trace remained in his eyes. She wondered what he saw in her face. She was uncertain as to what was there herself now that she speculated on him, wishing she had merely said good morning and then gone in to have her bath.
‘Did you sleep well?’
‘I’m still coming up for air,’ she said.
‘Sorry it had to be in the living-room, but I did offer you my bed – I mean, on condition that I took the sofa.’ They drank in silence, as if a treaty had been signed not to bother each other unnecessarily. She laughed at the thought. He didn’t, and looked up from his cup. ‘Someone once said that a person who laughed soon after getting out of bed was hungry. Shall I boil some eggs now, or do you want to dress first?’
‘I don’t know.’ And she didn’t. She wanted something, but didn’t know what, except that it had to be everything. She couldn’t be still, left her tea and walked into the living-room. The light of day made it hard to breathe, but she didn’t try, kept her lungs shallow, as if a good breath would fill her with something she did not want, and cause her to lose the feeling of desire. She felt restless and ashamed, not entirely under her own control, yet uncaring. On no other morning of her life had she been so fragmented in her sensations.