The Broken Chariot (29 page)

It had to be done somewhere, so why not in his room? He led the way step by step, between wallpaper that must have been there since before the Boer War. Likewise the shabby carpet. Cecilia wore the usual mock-thoroughbred expression at muted bruto noises from the backyards, and turned up her shapely nose at the sparse economy of the furnished room, heavy with odours from train and cigarette smoke, and diesel fumes from the buses, not much improved when he closed the window and curtains. A good half of him sympathized with her, which didn't please him, so he said: ‘If I bump into your old man again I'll black both his eyes, and break one of his arms.'

She laughed as he closed the door. ‘Oh, darling, you made him hopping mad. I promised faithfully not to see you any more. Don't be angry, though. He was only trying to look after me. He still thinks I'm a young girl. There are times when I don't like it, but I know he'll never grow up and treat me as a woman, and I'm twenty-nine.'

‘Doesn't it bother you?'

She sat on the bed. ‘I'm used to it. I can always pacify him, and get what I want.' Does that mean, Herbert wondered, that she thinks she can do the same with me? He undid his belt. ‘Take your clothes off.'

‘You know, I don't much like doing it here.'

He drew her forward for a kiss, and managed it delicately. ‘It's just as sweet as anywhere else. I feel such love for you. Come on, sweetheart.'

The encounter reminded her of one they had seen in a French film of before the war, so she loosened her skirt, and lay on the bed. He manoeuvred a warm shoulder out of her blouse, much appreciating that she accepted his squalid digs as an adventurous place for a fuck. His kisses sent her into such rapture that soon it didn't matter that they weren't on the brightly lit bed at home. He couldn't be sure to what extent she had climaxed, because a train whistle sounded at the same time.

‘You keep promising to let me see your typewriter,' she said, arranging her clothes. ‘But you never do.'

We've just made love a couple of feet above it, he wanted to say, having wrapped it in a piece of blanket and shoved it under the bed. Not that he was convinced the machine had been stolen from her office. ‘One of the letters went phut, and it's away for repair.'

‘Oh, what firm do you use?'

What indeed? ‘I take it to a bloke up the road. He knows all about them. Used to work at Barlock's.'

‘I really must see it, one day. I can't wait to read your novel, either, when it's finished.'

‘Nor can I.'

‘Well, you know what I mean.' She didn't want to stay long after making love, as if everyone in the street had their ears fixed against the wall. The French film effect had worn off. The room was cold, its window rattling at every breeze. She wanted to be walked back to where steam pipes were hot to the fingers.

She came out of the love-making mood before he did, though he was happy enough to shift, even to walk in silence through the same old dismal town, rain blowing against their faces.

‘Let's say goodnight at the end of the road in case my father's waiting. No use antagonizing him unnecessarily.' Another reason was the ever present violence in Herbert which, though it had some attraction, made her afraid for herself as well as for her father. It was too easy to imagine them getting into a fight. She would like Herbert to have more control, and not be so self-indulgent. He was often touchy for little reason. Her other young men had put on a show of respect for her father, but Herbert relished no such laws, and her father had ranted only that day that he wouldn't trust him as far as he could throw him.

They met less often, she making excuses for staying at home, which he didn't question, using the time to work on his novel, whose progress she no longer asked about, indicating that she had lost interest, which at times suited him well, while at others it increased his sense of isolation.

He persuaded her to go to the pub on Wilford Road, thinking she might like to see a scene from one of his chapters. He led her along dark streets to get there, which route, apart from tiring her, put her into a gloomy state, especially when the devil was in him to rile her more than usual. The saloon bar was disappointingly empty. ‘You haven't been in a dive like this before, I suppose?'

She smiled, knowing his game. ‘Is it just another of your planned adventures? It's called slumming, isn't it? If so, I can do without it. Pubs like this aren't places a well brought-up woman would normally go into.'

‘A good upbringing should allow one to go anywhere.'

She sipped her brandy as if the rogue factory worker before her would belt her one if she didn't appreciate it, or he would look askance if she drank it too quickly. Like everything about him it was hard to tell. ‘You ought to get a room in a better district.'

He only annoyed her to make her more lively, unless it was an underhand way of increasing the liveliness in himself, which thought brought on momentary shame at such meanness, though in revenge at her making him feel it he said: ‘You've told me that a hundred times already.'

Her face flushed with excitement, as if every quarrel took them further into the unknown. ‘I'm telling you again.'

‘There are two reasons why I don't,' he said calmly. ‘One is that it's cheap where I am, and the other is that it's close to work. Another thing is I like the woman who runs the place.'

She retied the pretty coloured scarf around her neck. ‘But you're a writer, aren't you? And you work in an office, don't you? You could surely get a nice flat.'

He swallowed half his pint, wondering whether to belch. He didn't, though if this was taking place in a story he certainly would have. ‘I've slaved on the shop floor since I was fourteen, except for a few years in the army.'

‘Oh stop that stupid talk. You know very well what my father told me. I suspected as much before, anyway. But why did you try to deceive me?' She was close to tears. ‘That's what's so unforgivable.'

If things had gone that far between two people it was time to end the affair. He grinned, as widely as he was able to stretch his lips without the help of his fingers. ‘I didn't deceive you, duck.'

‘You revelled in it. And in any case I've always known you weren't what you said you were.'

He respected her, and maybe loved her too much even now to let rip the full power of his assumed personality. ‘You just try to guess everything, without coming out honestly and asking to talk it over. You don't know anything about me.'

‘But if you loved me you'd have been open with me.' She was ready to let the tears fall. ‘Why weren't you?'

She guessed he had been searching for a reason to stop seeing her, and realized that she wanted to stop seeing him as well. Her legs supported her in standing up, though it was hard to stop the shake at her ankles. ‘You're sly and deceitful, and mean. You're afraid of the world and everybody in it. You don't know anything about human beings because you're not human yourself.'

The words came out hard, like a machine gun firing dumdum bullets which ought to have chewed his guts to mush, and would have if they'd meant as much to him as they obviously did to her. Real life again, he smiled. She had come alive at last, at the very point when he was intent on ditching her. To tolerate such yammering he drummed up more Archie than there was even Bert Gedling in himself, and no attempt at control could stop him. ‘You're a sour old maid, a bleedin' snob, as well, and all because o' the work I do.'

Further words were stopped by her brandy splashing his jacket and shirt. ‘Don't expect to see me again.'

The drops that hit his scar stung like acid, and if she hadn't gone quickly he would have smacked her between the eyes. He had often wondered how it would end, and now he knew.

‘I think you asked for that,' a man called from the bar, seeing his shock and rage impossible to hide.

Bert, realizing the procedure in such a situation, said that he supposed he did.

‘That's a lovely scar you've got, though,' the man said, stricken with admiration and envy. ‘Did
she
do it?'

‘Good Lord, no,' Herbert smiled.

‘She gave you what-for, though, didn't she?'

Herbert admitted that she had indeed, but said it wouldn't be the last time such a bust-up would happen to him. He hoped not, anyway, otherwise what was the point of being on earth?

‘You've got a point there,' the man said, and went on, cheerfully enough: ‘I've had six wives, if you want to know.'

Herbert didn't particularly. ‘Six?'

‘Well, women, you might say. Three of 'em I left, and the other three left me. Not bad, eh? I can't wait to find another, but I'm having a bit of a break at the moment.'

‘I'd say you deserved it.' Herbert strolled across for another pint. The occasion of his rupture with Cecilia called for a swagger. He seated himself beside the Lothario, though he hardly seemed that, with his fat slack body and worn features, pasty skin and grey but alert eyes.

His navy-blue three-piece suit was of good quality, his collar and tie impeccable, as was the trilby at a confident enough angle. Even the stool he sat on seemed to feel the privilege as he swivelled to face Herbert: ‘No use crying over spilt beer, that's what I always say.'

Herbert denied he was made that way, though knew he had lost her right enough, deciding never to get rid of anyone so unfeelingly again. In other words, have even more self-control over his mouth than heretofore, and watch his behaviour every second. That way he'd get what he wanted and stay sane as well – and you couldn't have it better than that. As for happiness, if you thought about having much of that you would really end up to your neck in shit.

‘You know how to keep a woman happy?'

The man seemed to be intercepting his thoughts, but Herbert appreciated being amused by this funny little chap who claimed to be so irresistible to women. ‘Give 'em a good fucking every night?' Bert said.

He laughed. ‘Yo' young 'uns! Nothing so crude as that. I've worked it out like this: every time you feel happy, give her a good hiding; every time you feel rotten and down in the dumps, make her feel as if she's the queen of the earth. Can't lose, because that way neither of you can take each other for granted, or get fed up.'

‘How come that three of your women left you, then?' He called for another pint and sat on a stool to listen.

‘I'd better start from the beginning.' The man sipped at whisky that the publican had put down without him even having to ask, suggesting that he was trying to drown his sorrows in drink now that his peculiar system had fallen apart at the seams.

The longer the rigmarole went on the more dismal it became, a catalogue of tricks and woes spun out in monotone, with a lack of art that Herbert found depressing, boredom only offset by pint after pint until both of them were blindoe and incoherent. It was a story no one either sane or drunk could make head or tail of, and the only happiness of the evening was when he reeled into the street at kicking-out time, finding the way back to his room as if radar had drawn him to it.

Sitting alone he realized the truth that Cecilia had walked out on him, and who could blame her? With another woman it might only have been a step to a more realistic relationship (albeit of unbearable cosiness) though with her it was final because he had so blatantly let it happen, had even been gentleman enough to engineer it in his own particular way.

Consoling himself, before getting out of his clothes and falling into a dreamless sleep, he thought of Aeneas leaving Dido at Carthage, and couldn't imagine that Aeneas had felt very good about it either as he sailed away over the cerulean briny. Like Aeneas too he felt beckoned on to higher things, while not caring to ask himself what they might be.

Sixteen

He lit the Rippingill heater, and the bubble of paraffin going down into the reservoir under the wick was a comforting sound on cold nights. Though heavier curtains made a womb to sit in, both glass and cloth seemed merely conductors to let the freezing fog inside. He wore two pullovers as well as a jacket and a pair of mittens, less willing to shiver than in former days, when he had undressed and jumped naked into bed. Now on icy nights he undid belt and all buttons, braces and bootlaces, and had his pyjama top to hand as soon as shirt and vest came off, and the bottoms pulled on the moment he was out of his boots. Socks were left till the bedclothes were drawn back and he could get in to generate warmth. Every winter seemed closer to the one before, each useful for writing his novel over and over again in an effort to transmute people so that not only would they find it difficult to spot themselves, but would also get some feeling as to their relationship with earth and heaven.

Mrs Denman's had been his refuge longer than any other place, and he occasionally felt, as at the climax of one of those penny-dreadful comic books sometimes read at school, that the walls of his room were closing in, and would crush him to death. The hero-victim inevitably found a way out, but Herbert saw no exit except by keeping a wary eye on the walls' position – and endurance. The dulling sunflowers of the wallpaper urged him to write for them as his first audience, as if they monitored every sentence even before it came into his mind; and when he was out of the room they would put on flesh and blood, to check with big brown Cyclopean eyes what he had written.

He needed some other brain to imbibe what he had done, even if only to tell him he wasn't on a slow boat to madness, or that the accumulating pages in the cardboard box under his bed weren't merely the evidence of his splintered mind. Perhaps it didn't much matter, for he had no fear of madness as long as he felt the anguish of uncertainty about what he was doing, but he needed to know whether the writing would engross others to the extent that he was mesmerized on reading it himself.