John Braine - Room at the Top

She hung up before I had the chance to answer and I went back to the Town Hall, nearly walking under a bus; everything was tickety-boo again and I was so happy that I moved in a trance; simply to hear her slightly husky voice again had lifted all the worries from my shoulders, made what had happened at the Civic Ball trivial.

I bumped into June when I was running along the long corridor into the Treasurer's. Unthinkingly I put my hands out to her waist and kissed her soft cheek with its lovely golden down. I didn't kiss her but all women; I know they're stupid and unaccountable, ruled by the moon one and all, poor bitches, but there's a physical goodness about them as sacred as milk - there's no such thing as a bad woman, because their soft complexities are what give us life.

She put her hand to her cheek. "Summer is here," she said.

"It's always summer wherever you are," I said.

I saw her lips tremble and her face go dreamy. For a second I saw the truth. She was a good girl, a virgin - you can always tell - and I'd seen her mother once, a decent plump woman with a cheerful face who, June had once told me, had taught her everything about housekeeping from baking to brewing. In a healthier kind of society she'd have worn a special headdress or hair style or a flower behind her ear to indicate that she was looking for a husband; and in a heathier kind of society all the young men would have been pursuing her - hotly and fiercely but with honourable intentions. There was an honest nourishing happiness emanating from her; if women were like food she'd be like good dripping with its mixture of salty richness and almost sweet blandness; if the image seems ludicrous, put your nose near a bowl of fresh beef dripping; it has a smell which is homely and warm as a clean kitchen but is also as exciting and poetic as the flowers and grass the beasts feed upon.

I realised all this but I went on running past her, not looking back. Before Christmas it would have been possible for me to look back; before Christmas I could have courted June. Nothing else would have done, and I'm always glad that I realised this. She's been married happily now this past four years - or at least she's not unhappy that I know of. But I somehow feel that I hurt her. It must have seemed that she was offering me a good home-cooked dinner and that I was rejecting it in favour of a slice of chalky shop bread with factory-made meat paste - I feel a sense of waste whenever I think of June. I'm sure that we choose our own destinies; but I can't help feeling that once one's chosen a certain track there's remarkably little opportunity of changing it.

But there was no room in my head for such thoughts that morning; all that mattered was that soon I'd be with Alice and the celibacy of two months would be broken. My desire to be with her again was mostly on this account; after all, one can't be expected to lead a normal sex life for a long period and then suddenly be deprived of it and not suffer. I don't mean that I wanted her only as a body; the main reason for my celibacy was that she had spoiled me for the dance-hall pick-up and the pub flopsie, for the bit of fun, the quick nibble; there are a thousand synonyms for the sort of thing I mean, and their flat nastiness reflects the disgust which any man one stage above the apes is bound to feel when he unites with a woman whom he despises. But all the humiliation I'd suffered since we'd quarrelled - from Hoylake, from the Storrs, from Jack Wales, from the Browns - dissolved in my memory beside the image of Alice in my arms again, of grown-up love instead of the frustrating teen-age games I'd been playing with Susan.

I went up to Gilden in the afternoon and took in money for rent and taxes and paid out money for wages for about three hours; it was fortunate that this job - which was being palmed off on me more and more often - was the sort which could be performed in his sleep by an idiot child. Even then, I generally enjoyed it; Gilden was, as I've said before, a typical moorland village, its inhabitants incredibly inbred, and it was always interesting to see the twelve basic faces - there had only really been twelve families there since the Conquest - popping up with slight variations due to sex and age.

That afternoon each of the faces before me was a blank. There was only one face that I wanted to see, only one voice that I wanted to bear, only one body that I wanted to touch. I was once extravagant with my cigarette ration at Stalag 1000 and spent three days without tobacco; it was like that but worse, a brackish wanting, a roughness inside, a black uneasiness; the blank faces before me were prisoners' faces, the long oak table and the heavy ledgers and the official notices and the official buff and olive walls of the front room of the village Institute were the barbed wire and the machine-gun towers and the Alsatians which everyone said were trained to go for your genitals first.

When we met at the St. Clair it wasn't at all as I imagined it would be. We were alone in the Snug; I kissed her briefly on the cheek. She put her hand out to my face and gulped back a tear: it was a noisy snuffle, without grace or artifice and I found my guts dissolving with pity.

"I'm so sorry, darling. I didn't mean it, I never meant to hurt you."

"I'm making a show of myself. I was going to be very sensible!"

"For Christ's sake no. Let's get out of here and then we can talk."

Once she was in the car she let herself go; the tears poured down her cheeks unceasingly, leaving two parallel streaks in her make-up. I drove as fast as I dared to Sparrow Hill, nearly knocking down a cyclist at the top of St. Clair Road; I saw his white face as he wobbled into the gutter, shaking his fist at us.

Lying under the beeches in the gentle darkness I didn't speak. She kept on crying, burying her face in my chest; there was a dark patch of moisture on my shirt.

"It doesn't matter now," I said, when at last she'd dried her eyes. "There's no need to cry. You know why I made such a fuss, don't you?"

"I'm glad you did," she said. "It was horrible when you looked at me as if I were dirt, but I'm glad you cared."

"I love you."

"I'm old and I look terrible. You can't possibly."

She did look terrible, every year of her age even in the darkness; but the words were out now, our journey had begun. It wasn't a romantic feeling: I had no illusions about her or myself. When we were together I wasn't lonely, when we were apart I was lonely. It was as simple as that.

"Don't you love me?" I asked her.

"Of course I do, you fool. What do you think I was crying for?"

She took my hand and put it inside her blouse. "There, honey," she whispered. "Like some animal returning home."

There was a smell of summer around us, of new green and moist earth; the air up there on the moors was good and clean and sharp, there was no smoke and dirt to make your lungs feel as if they were stuffed with cotton wool - we were part of that, but not violently, we were one happy person, one reality. I wanted to take her then, not because the act itself mattered, but because I wanted to be close to her, to give her something of myself. I put my hand upon her knee. She pushed it away.

"Not now."

"I'm sorry."

"Me too. I wasn't going to come tonight, I always look awful and feel worse - you know how it is."

"Fortunately no." We began to laugh.

"I needed to see you so badly but I hate inflicting myself on you when ..."

"You couldn't ever inflict yourself upon me. I love you just as much now as when you're well."

"Would you sleep with me, though? Would you share a bed with me?"

"Why not? You need company when you're feeling ill and miserable."

She started to cry again. "Oh God, you're so normal . I do love you for that, I do love you, I do love you - " She spoke the next words in a whisper. "I'm so happy with you that I wish I could die now. I wish that I could die now. "