John Braine - Room at the Top

I turned away from the house and walked quickly away. It had been a mistake to go there. The watertight compartments were out of order; images of pain and distress, more memories of things I'd seen during the war and would rather have forgotten, rose to the surface of my mind. As long as I kept on walking they'd remain mixed and chaotic, like imperfectly recollected books and films; once I stopped they'd become unbearably organised; if I walked quickly I could cram my mind with the speed of my own movement, with the grocer's shop and its frosted window and the Christmas tree, with the men's outfitters and the awful American ties, with the Board School and its murderous asphalt playground - and then I stopped trying. It was futile; here on the left stood the huge bulk of Torver's Mills where Father had worked for twenty years; here was the Wellington, his local, and here was the greengrocer's where he bought muscatel raisins for our Sunday walks - wherever I looked there was a memory, an italicising of death.

Why hadn't I noticed it before? Because Warley had shown me a new way of living; for the first time I'd lived in a place without memories. And for the first time lived in a place; in the three months I'd been there I was already more a part of the town, more involved in its life, than ever I had been in my birthplace. And even for three days only, I couldn't endure the chilly bedroom with its hideous wallpaper and view of mill chimneys and middens, the bath with its peeling enamel, the scratchy blankets - my aunt and uncle were unselfish and generous and gentle, they spoke only the language of giving, but no virtue was substitute for the cool smoothness of linen, the glittering cleanliness of a real bathroom, the view of Warley Moor at dawn, and the saunter along St. Clair Road past the expensive houses.

"Dead Dufton," I muttered to myself. "Dirty Dufton, Dreary Dufton, Despicable Dufton - " then stopped. It was too quiet. There were lights in the windows but they seemed as if put there to deceive - follow them and you were over the precipice, crashing into the witch's cave to labour in the mills forever. There were cigarette ends and orange peel and sweet wrappers in the gutter but no one living had smoked those cigarettes or eaten those sweets; the town reminded me of those detective stories in dossier form which used to be sold complete with clues - cigarette ends, poisoned lozenges, hairpins ... I walked over the suspension bridge at the top of the town; the river was running faster than usual, swollen with melted snow and harried by the northeast wind; the bridge was swaying and creaking beneath my feet, and I suddenly was afraid that it might deliberately throw me into the water like a vicious horse; I forced myself to walk slowly, but the sweat was dripping off my brow.

Alice took hold of me by my hair. "You've a nice body, do you know that? Hairy but not too hairy. I never could bear animated hearthrugs."

I felt as if I were choking. "God, you're lovely. You - I don't know what to say, you're so beautiful."

"What, an old woman like me?"

"You're not old."

"Oh yes I am, honey. Much older than you."

"I wish you wouldn't talk as if I were a minor," I said with some irritation. "I'm twenty-five and I've had a lot of experience.

"I'm sure you have." Her dark blue eyes were tender and amused. She pulled my head down to her breasts. "There now, my sweet baby, there now. You're very old and very mature and you're going to be a great man."

I could see nothing but her body, breathe nothing but that peppery odour of lavender and the indescribable, infinitely good smell of woman's flesh. I pressed my face tighter; the thin hands on my head tightened convulsively.

"Oh God," she said, "you're so good. You're so good to me. You're so kind. There was never anyone so good to me before. I'm alive now, all of me's alive. I'm feeling things I'd forgotten, the nerve's regenerating. It hurts sometimes ... I don't care." She covered my face with kisses.

The kisses did more to me than the longest kiss on the mouth could have done. They weren't preliminaries; they were complete in themselves. She kissed me as moistly as a little girl; and I was glad of this; I was discovering that I never had really made love to a woman before or truly enjoyed a woman's body. The sort of sex I was used to was sex as it would be if human beings were like screen characters - hygenic, perfumed, with no normal odours or tastes - as if flesh were silk stretched over rubber, as if lips were the only sensitive part, as if the natural secretions were shameful.

Alice was no more greedy of actual sex than the others; but she was shameless in love, with no repugnances, no inhibitions. In her arms I was learning quickly; so that now I actually found myself drinking the moisture from her lips. I didn't want to wash it off, I wanted it to stay, for her to become part of me.

"You beautiful brute," she said, and drew the bedclothes aside. "You beautiful uncomplicated brute."

"No," I said. "As they say in the films, I'm just a crazy mixed-up kid."

She ran her hand delicately over my chest. "You should have been a navvy. I hate to think of you ever wearing clothes."

"Navvies don't go about naked. If anything they wear far more than accountants."

"I wish you were one just the same. I'd let you beat me every Saturday night ... Joe, will you tell me something?"

"What, darling?"

She pulled a hair from my chest. "There, I'll keep that as a souvenir." She put her face against my chest and lay silent.

"That wasn't what you wanted to ask me about," I said. "Besides, you took it without asking."

"It's a funny question. All ifs. Look, supposing you'd met me before I married, supposing I were ten years younger - how would you have felt about me?"

"That's simple. Like now."

"That's not what I meant. Would you have taken me seriously?" Her voice was muffled against my chest.

"Yes. You know that I would. But what's the use?"

"Don't be practical, Joe. Please don't be sensible. Just imagine me as I was ten years ago. And you as you are now."

I looked into her eyes. I could see my face in her pupils, flushed, with my hair tousled. "You're looking babies," she said, almost coyly. "If you look long enough, you'll see a baby."

I had the same sensation that I had when as a child of ten I'd seen my Aunt Emily with her son at her breast. And it was, too, like the sensation I'd had when I'd intercepted looks and actions of my parents - the secret, bold look before bedtime, the hand on the knee - it was as if I'd stumbled upon something bigger than myself. Something which was uncompromisingly real, something which I couldn't avoid but which, I felt ashamedly, I was trying to avoid. There was happiness at its centre but it was a frightening kind of happiness.

"There were no lines then," she said. "And I was firm here - " she put my hands on her breasts. "Everything was ahead of me. I couldn't sleep sometimes, wondering what would happen to me - I knew that it would be wonderful, whatever it was ... No, that would be when I was nineteen. Yes, imagine me nineteen. That's the best age. I used to feel happy, terribly happy, all of a sudden, and there'd be no reason for it. And I'd cry easily but I'd enjoy it and it never made my eyes red. Would you have taken me seriously?"

"You probably wouldn't have taken me seriously."

"I'd have been silly enough for that ... I had a career then. I'd just graduated from the drama school - a broken-down place with a broken-down old ham in charge of it - the best Mummy could afford. It was a cheap finishing school, you see. Mummy hoped that I'd learn to speak and move properly there and acquire a sort of polish and a little glamour - and then hook a rich young man and retrieve the family fortunes."