Tessa Hadley - Everything Will Be All Right

Even as Joyce offered this and he accepted it she realized what a mistake she was making. There was nowhere in the flat she could take him. The tiny hall was windowless and half filled with the hallstand. The whole place reeked: of cabbage, boiled bacon, the wet cloths off the steamed pudding, shoe polish. She led the way into the front room and then stood helplessly. Martin’s polishing had spread right out across the floor; there was no way to walk round him, and anyway, she could hardly have taken Ray into the bedroom.

— How about this? Martin read with glee, partly for the benefit of the visitor. “Woman who died: ‘Nothing wrong.’”

Lil came out of the kitchen, wiping her wet red hands on her apron.

— Come on in, pet, she said. You’re too late for dinner. Would you like a bit of cold bacon?

— Oh, no, said Joyce, he wouldn’t.

— I won’t, thank you, said Ray with weary politeness. I’m not hungry.

Since they moved into town, Lil had got a job working in a cake shop. The frilled caps and aprons she had to wear were draped across a clothes horse on the hearth rug along with the girls’ stockings and brassieres; this normally stood in the kitchen sink when it wasn’t full of dishes.

— Excuse the mess, said Lil cheerfully. Let me lift that bedding off the sofa so you can sit down, and I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.

— This is Mr. Deare, said Joyce. He’s one of my lecturers. This is my mother, and my brother and sister.

— I thought you were just one of Joyce’s chums, said Lil in real dismay.

Joyce thought that Ray ought somehow to have explained himself, to have taken charge of the situation from his position of authority. Couldn’t he at least have said he’d come to talk to her about her work? Instead he stood cowed and desperate looking, as if he might make a dreadful mistake and accept the cup of tea.

— We could clear up in here, offered Lil, flustered. If you need to talk to Joyce. We could all wait in the bedroom.

— I haven’t really come to apologize, said Ray to Joyce, ignoring the others gawping at them. I need to talk to you.

— Actually, I shouldn’t have brought you in, Joyce said then, recklessly. We don’t really have the space, as you can see. I’ll get my coat. We could discuss things as we walk along.

— You’ve still got that tea towel round your neck, said Ann.

Joyce unwound it with superb indifference, then fumbled in the dark in the hallstand for her outdoor shoes.

— Will you be long? said Lil with foreboding.

— Might be.

It didn’t matter that she knew she sounded falsely bright; she would have pretended any brazen thing, just to escape. Efficiently, she steered Ray out into the street.

— Shall I put the kettle on? Lil called after them.

— Don’t bother to wait for us.

They walked up toward the heath. It was an ordinary Sunday. Family groups or couples or absorbed solitary walkers straggled desultorily on Clore Hill, so bustling and purposeful on weekdays but muted now, with its closed shops and its road empty of traffic. Joyce walked as though she were wearing giant boots, the kind that make you take huge mile-long strides with every step; she was leaving her old self behind forever in no time, in a few minutes.

— I love you, Ray was saying. I’ve fallen in love with you.

Of course this was ridiculous.

And yet Joyce was also ready for the possibility that it was true. Secretly, she had probably always believed that if only someone ever uncovered her real self it might command love like this, all at one blow: like a vindication from outside of all the innumerable tiny things that made her up and that otherwise only she would ever know.

* * *

This peremptory absolute need had seized ray deare once or twice before since he had been married to Iris. He recognized the helplessness and the astonishment at his own abjection. Every day he moved safely among women, enjoying the nearness of their bodies, their scent, their various blooming faces: students, models, women passing in the crowd. And then suddenly by some signal, some tiny-seeming word or touch or hint, one of them would separate herself from that background awareness and swell until she filled out all his thoughts, consumingly, swallowing up the point of everything else. It was impossible to work as long as he felt like this. Impossible to eat or to think, at least until something was settled one way or the other.

Joyce laughed out loud at him, shaking her head.

— Don’t be ridiculous, she said.

Her earrings and her ponytail swung excitedly. She had put on a suede jacket to come out with him and knotted a scarf jauntily round her neck, a beige silk one decorated with a pattern of coins: her clothes were always easily stylish; she made no fuss. How unusual it was, to have that red hair with a skin so creamy pale and clear, even with a hint of blue vein at the temple. He grasped at the top of her arm as they walked, wishing they weren’t hurrying, longing to be with her somewhere alone where he could convince her, not absurdly on the public street; he was furious with anger at everyone they passed who looked at them.

This wasn’t exactly like those other times. With those other girls he had known, even while he was burning up for them, that he wasn’t afraid; he could pull himself back if he wanted.

— Do you think I’m ridiculous? Do you really think that?

He searched her face, trying to read her expression. Probably she thought he was stuffy and ancient. She might be disgusted because he had touched her last night; for all he knew she was a virgin and it had been her first contact with a naked man. Perhaps he had smelled, or snored, while he lay beside her.

— Well, no, of course you’re not a ridiculous person.

— I love you. Everything about you.

He had not undressed and lain beside her last night because he had had too much to drink and had forgotten she was staying. It wasn’t even because he had been swollen and agitated with desire for her, although he was now, hardly knowing where they were walking to or what he was saying. He had lain beside her because she was the one who matched him, the one he ought to be lying down with every night of his life. He’d only known that for a few hours, but it seemed quite certain. He tried to explain to her.

— I chose you, without knowing what I was doing.

— That wasn’t what I thought, she said. I thought you’d hate me!

— Hate you! If you only knew!

She covered her face with her fingers. He couldn’t see if she was smiling or distraught at him.

— Whatever will my family think?

She was only a child. He needed to remember that. He must treat her with absolute tenderness. The idea of how young she was pricked his eyes with tears.

— I don’t care, he said. I had to tell you. I don’t care what they think.

They reached the top of the hill and set off across the heath for the water tower with its ring of trees, then down into the lumpy secretive craters where the bombs were supposed to have fallen. It was a dull afternoon. He took her hand — warm, small, strong — and pulled to try and slow her down. She let her hand stay in his. In here it seemed possible for him to try to kiss her. If they emerged from the craters to the level grass again he’d have lost his chance.

— You don’t know me well enough to be in love with me, she said.

— I don’t need to know you. Not in the way you mean.

— But I’m not like you. I’m not brilliant or an important artist or anything.

— That’s exactly it. I don’t want you to be those things. You’re real. It’s so real. You’re not trying to be something else.

The path became too narrow for them to walk side by side. She went first and he followed, frowning, tripping over the bramble roots that grew across the dirt, not daring to reach out for her. He stared at her body moving under her clothes. Surely she had modeled for him once or twice; he tried to remember the detail of how her buttocks curved generously from her narrow waist, how her wide thighs slanted down into her knees. He couldn’t believe that he had not loved her then, when he was drawing her.