An elbow-pain tightened her grip, and took the weight of the board which banged into her face. Someone had pushed viciously from the front. George had caught her, and was ready to gloat or kick. She heard herself shouting.
Her burden was indestructible, but she felt the biting ache of her grazed hand. No one was nearby. At whatever cost, every limb had played its part in guarding the mirror. An attempt to break it had failed at the expense of a fingernail, proving that the speed of disaster wasn’t always too quick to handle.
She opened the front door, thankful to be out of the rain, and knew that even if she took all day to get her prize up the stairs no one would notice how happy she felt about the bit of old trash she had saved.
10
She had never known what she appeared like till now, because those mirrors previously looked into had been surrounded by things which weren’t entirely hers. The histories of such objects had intimidated her to the extent that her features seemed either false or indistinct when she stared back at herself from the mirror. She could never look for long because George was always moving in another part of the house, and could come in any second to distort her image.
A proper upstanding full-length mirror would not only allow her to talk to herself, but to see the motions of her lips as well. If she cared to she could speak without noise, like a dumb person. It seemed less insane to have her features clearly in view. When she spoke she would see that she resembled only herself. The inside of the mouth was as important as the tip of her nose or the colour of her eyes.
The clarity of her reflected features would have been seen only as a flat picture when sitting by her dressing-table in what used to be her home, an image pained and drab which she couldn’t bear to look at for long, so that she rarely had to worry about being caught examining herself. A mirror showed what was in your spirit, and there had been nothing more than a mask of indecision hiding what one day, after self-murder or emotional earthquake, might be revealed.
The woodwork around the mirror had been eaten with worm, so she bought a chisel and a screwdriver and, careful not to send any cracks through the silvering behind, eased each piece away. Tall and narrow, it leaned without borders against the wall so that when she stood back her whole form could be seen, enabling her to talk from a distance if anything special came into her mind.
She sometimes saw her son Edward as if he were behind her, sent by George as an emissary to bring her home. Walking through Bayswater he had been coming towards her, or standing on the platform of a bus that turned a corner. He was eighteen, and at college, but in her dreams Edward was eight years old, and talked as if he were herself, and also looked as if he were George, so that she woke with tears on remembering that part of her life. What she had lived could not be taken away, but anguish did not diminish on seeing the first light of another day straining at the window, which could only be pushed back by switching on the light and glancing in the mirror as she passed to brush her teeth at the sink. Change was a poison that had to run its course before healing could begin. But knowing such a thing did not make life easier to bear. Her inability to profit from self-knowledge created a further layer of torment.
She could reflect any person in her mirror, but it was another matter when it came to who was allowed into her dreams. The walls of rooms and corridors glowed with pale intimidating light. Such dreams caused her mind to labour all night long among frightening combinations of people she had known, permutations lacking any logic or reason. The underworld dogs of the past were set on her by George and his family now that they were no longer able to get at her above ground. They came through doorways, or sprang in mayhem from the waves of the sea or the muddy banks of rivers. With changing faces they pursued her towards disaster, so that she woke having bitten hard enough on her finger for blood to show. At breakfast it was impossible to reorganize every move of her night’s dreams.
If George had been unfortunate in meeting her, he had been even more unlucky with the family he had been born into. Perhaps such was the common burden of the self-made man, because having something to fight against gave inordinate resource and strength. It was impossible to get away from his family, but he never ceased trying, while making it obvious that his effort was as much for Pam’s sake as for his own, though she guessed that the process must have started long before meeting her.
They had broken with his brothers on many occasions, and though George felt safer and more at peace she knew that he also regretted the poorer spiritual surroundings in which he found himself. He had sharpened his ambition, and learned that the value of what you strove for was only equalled by the payment you made. Having taught him, she now had to learn the same hard lessons for herself.
George’s family despised his endeavours to become better off, gave their opinion that to say he’d been born would be putting it mildly. Hatched was more like it, for a money-grubbing weasel like him. You couldn’t deny their humour, as they clacked with laughter behind his back. When George first set up the workshop his three brothers got sacked from their jobs and expected him to set them on, to pay them more than his best men yet allow them to boss it over the others and walk around in clean overalls all day doing nothing, as if that was their right, on the cynical assumption that blood was thicker than water.
George, knowing them better than she did, was more afraid of them. They were a woebegone lot, he complained, always glued to the telly or a pint of ale, a rough bunch who knew nothing more than how to live from hand to mouth.
After one severance of contact they made telephone calls while George was at work.
‘Pam?’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Harry.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘I’m ringing to ask if you’ll lend us ten quid. We ain’t got a cent between us.’
‘I haven’t got it. We’ve nothing to spare.’
He waited for her to say something else, but she held back, though it was hard to do so.’
‘Mean bleeder!’ he said at last.
‘What do you want?’
‘Can we come up and watch a film on your colour telly?’
‘No. We’re busy.’
‘We shan’t bother you.’
Pause.
What next? she wondered.
‘You set him against us. Our George was all right till he married you.’
‘You’re off your head. Stop phoning.’
‘Why don’t you help us, then?’
‘We have done. Lots of times. You know we have.’
He lied. ‘You haven’t.’
‘Why don’t you pay us back some of the money that you owe us? It’s about time you did.’
‘I’m out o’ wok. How can I?’
‘Get another job, then. There’s plenty of work these days.’
Silence.
Then he shouted: ‘You’re a rotten whore!’
They knew what to expect from each other. She put the phone down. She dreaded any of them coming to the house, kept the door locked when alone, and never answered the bell if she saw one of them opening the gate. When she and George came back from the cinema one night a stone had been thrown through the front window. He said it was no use calling the police.
‘Why not?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure it’s them, that’s why. But if it is, then I’ve got something against ’em now. They might be careful before they do anything else, in case I bring this up as well.’
He knew them better than she did.
They had no curiosity beyond that of wanting to pierce the future and find out what teams would score next Saturday, so that they could fill in the pools form for a sure win before sitting in front of the television to watch the match of the day.
There were better families, and no doubt far worse, but to get beyond the immediate cycle of work, food, shelter and sex wasn’t part of their lives. Their existence was ordered for them, while they imagined themselves independent. Perhaps they enjoyed life more than if they
had striven to get on because, unless Alf’s telly popped a valve, or illness clawed Harry down, or the big end went in Bert’s car engine (they all had clapped-out motors in which to rattle around the streets), they were happy enough in their way, which blinded them to what the world might be doing to them, and stopped them saving what money they earned in order to better their lives.
These weren’t the proletarian revolutionary potential that the young man at the WEA had mentioned – if such existed, and she hoped it didn’t – though maybe they would be far worse if someone came along and persuaded them that it was about time they got up and inherited the earth. They had been to prison earlier in their lives, except George, who by a miracle – he admitted – had avoided it.
After the ringing of wedding bells, and the pushing of George’s ring on to her finger, there seemed no reason not to be friendly with his brothers. But all they wanted to do at the reception was eat and get drunk. George told her that this was only natural, but in her anxiety she was afraid of them. Coming back from the toilet after the meal she met Harry in the corridor who would not let her by: ‘Give us a kiss, duck.’
‘No.’
He gripped her arm.
‘You’re drunk. Get out of my way.’
‘Come on, he wain’t know.’
She considered letting him have one quick kiss, but knew that if she did he would run straight to George and distress him by showing off about it. Her knees were trembling, and she felt sick. ‘He will if you don’t stop being so daft.’
‘Don’t care if he does. If he says ote I’ll thump ’im. He’s got no guts, our George ain’t. You’ll have a lot better time if you come to bed with me, duck.’
They had once held George by one arm over the opening of an old mine shaft, threatening to drop him into oblivion, keeping him suspended for as long as their strength lasted. It was good fun. They laughed at his screams for mercy, but George told her that he couldn’t forget, no matter how friendly they had been afterwards.
‘If you don’t let me go, I’ll shout for somebody.’ She hoped no one would hear, because she was ashamed and angry at not having asked one of the bridesmaids to come out with her.
He swayed. ‘Not even a kiss, then?’
There was no difference in their height, and she wondered, as he tensed his shoulders, why she didn’t lift her fist to him, but she could only back away as he fumbled for her breasts.
‘Come on, let’s have a bit!’
The door opened. ‘Leave her alone, can’t you?’ her father said. ‘A damned fine bunch she’s got us married into!’
Her joy was smashed at his implication that she was to blame. The wedding was his first contact with George’s relations, and he liked none of them. Having worked in a shop most of his life, he had kept his family what was still known as ‘respectable’. ‘I’ve never had much money, but you learn to keep your head above water,’ he said, neither boasting nor complaining, ‘as if your neck was made of cork!’
He didn’t dislike George less than any other young man who might have wanted to marry his daughter, but had hoped they would separate before it came to a union she would never get out of. He had kept quiet in case his words only brought them closer, and he saw his mistake, though knew it would have made no difference anyway in these enlightened times.
Harry was charming, and sober. ‘Don’t get like that, Albert.’
‘Go back inside,’ he told Pam, ‘or they’ll miss you.’ The flower in his button-hole was lopsided, and a strand of well-creamed hair had fallen over his forehead. ‘If ever you bother her again’ – and the grin of conciliation immediately pulled itself inwards from Harry’s face – ‘I’ll hammer you. You can tell that to anybody else in your lot. And if they don’t like it, they’ll bloody get summat as well.’
It was difficult to know whether he would have succeeded, but moral force was on his side, which might give speed and weight in any physical dispute. Harry was not cowed, but stepped aside in case there should be any doubt that he wanted the incident to end.
They taunted George, who after the first champagne drank only orange squash. He wasn’t man enough to pour real booze inside. Was he frightened he wouldn’t be able to ‘get it in’ later on? Alf was shouted down, but he had said it. Other advice followed which they made sure George heard, such clattering laughter proving their possession of him for as long as he lived.
She sat by her father at the top table, overhearing an argument. ‘It must have been at least five hundred years ago,’ Bert said.
Harry sat with legs sprawled. ‘It couldn’t have been. He was born about two hundred years ago, I’d say. No more than that.’
‘I’ll bet it was seven or eight hundred.’ Bert, the eldest of the four brothers, was tall and thin in those days, as opposed to corpulent now. He had a close-set face, shrewd but not tight, knowing without being predatory, the chairman of the brothers rather than their leader, who thereby got his own way more often than not, and was unassailable in his position. He was more right than he knew in assuming Jesus to have been born above seven or eight hundred years ago, but then, it was in his nature to be so.
‘Bet you, then,’ said Harry, still truculent after getting no kiss from Pam and being unjustifiably threatened by her father, whom he would forever think of as a miserable bastard unable to take a bit of fun.
Bert called to the next table: ‘Hey, Tom, how many years ago was it Jesus was born? This daft bogger said it was only two hundred.’
Tom, his brother-in-law, was more knowledgeable. ‘Two bloody thousand, more like. Must a been. The bloody Romans killed ’im, didn’t they? Nailed ’im on a cross. I learned it at Sunday School.’
Pam’s father leaned: ‘Somebody should tell ’em what year it is,’ he whispered.
Alf began a joke so that she as well as George would hear, and when George protested that he had heard it all before, one of his friends from work said he hadn’t, though Pam knew that even if the whole world could retail it backwards Alf was set on spouting it for her especial benefit. She longed for them to scatter to their various homes, or to the pubs.
He pushed his tongue out as if it needed air, pulled it in as if it had had too much of a good thing, swirled it around his mouth, gave it a drink of ale by way of encouragement, then smiled with contrition as if, because they had waited long enough for his joke, he would now make amends and get on with it. Short and wiry, he was less fit than the others. All his teeth were false, and he’d been operated on for ulcers. But he kept his position of equality among his brothers by sheer pertinacity, and by masking the unshakeable vulnerability of his features with a humour that took account of nobody’s feelings, theirs least of all but, most important, not even his own.
‘There was this courting couple, see? Ah, pass that ale. I’m dying o’ thirst. My tongue’s got cramp again: it’s blocking my windpipe. Well, they worn’t going to get married for a couple o’ months, and he was askin’ her to let him have it. “Go on, duck,” he said, “I can’t wait. Honest, I’ll go barmy if you don’t let me have a bit.” She said no, not till they was married. It worn’t right, she said. A proper tight-arse, she was. Well, he kept on trying to get it, and she thought of every way to put him off, but no, no excuse was good enough. She just couldn’t stop his gallop.’
Pam knew every phrase, though not what the end of the tale would be. He told it with a glitter in his eyes, raised eyebrows, winks – all the right gestures. She prayed that God in heaven would annihilate him. Her hand held a glass whose tight shape gave comfort.
‘Any road up,’ he went on, ‘she thought of an excuse that he wouldn’t be able to get round.’ He glanced, to be sure she listened, though knowing she had no option. ‘Cheer up, duck! Yer en’t lost ote, ev yer? It wain’t be long now though!’
He squared himself, held a fist high. They all laughed, telling him to leave her alone and get on with it. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the daft sod kept on at her to let him have a bit of the old you-know-what, but at
last she said: “No, Teddy,” or whatever his name was, “I can’t let you have it, because it’s Lent.” Well, our Teddy goes dead white at this, and shouts: “What do you say? Lent? Lent? You’d better get the bloody thing back then if it’s lent, because we’re going to be needing it soon!”’
Those who hadn’t been listening looked across on hearing laughter as if someone had tapped a rock and let it loose. ‘Here, just a minute, I’ve got another one …’
Alf wanted to prove that though he may not have a sense of decency he was at least blessed with a memory. ‘It’s about this couple who went on their honeymoon. But let me get a quick sup at that Shippoes first. I’m as thirsty as a straw dog in the desert!’
Most of the women talked among themselves at other tables, knowing better than to bother hearing jokes that would make them feel as if every man in the world wanted them only for that. Pam counted the minutes as they moved on the clock. She picked up her empty glass with a grip so tight she was afraid it would split.
She felt that those within range ought to tell Alf in no uncertain terms to pack it in; or they might at least give a hint that if he didn’t stop they would hustle him outside to cool off. He knew what he was doing, his taunts deliberately set to bring tears. But others were under the spell of his story, even if only to confirm whether or not they’d heard it before. They too relished the spite that all men use when close to women, and want either to shame them or get them on the floor.
Alf sucked three-quarters of a pint from his jar. ‘Well, there they was, see, a young couple in this room at an hotel. They’d been humping around all night. I don’t suppose anybody got a bit of sleep next door, and that’s a fact. But when the bloke stood at the blind in the morning, ready to let it up, he went up with it, right to the top and round the roller! One minute he was going up and down like a yo-yo, and the next he was spinning round and round like a catherine wheel shouting get me off, get me off, get me off …’