Tessa Hadley - The Past

Truly, in that moment she wasn’t gratified — even though he’d come all this way just to find her. All her exasperation, which might have been waning, revived at the actual sight of Tom. Of course she couldn’t really send him away, though she longed to do it; there was nowhere for him to go from here, in the middle of the night. And she was afraid of his making more noise, waking up her parents, confirming their suspicion that in choosing Tom she had made drastic errors of judgement and taste. She told him to wait, she would come down; then she closed the window and stood in her bedroom at a loss, not knowing what to do with him. This room, where she had slept alone all through her childhood and girlhood, appeared in that moment virginal and sacrosanct — even though she’d spent any number of nights in it with Tom since they’d been married, when they’d come visiting together. But her marriage seemed to her now a flimsy, provisional thing, and the spell of her solitude had grown powerful again. Every nerve was strained in her, against his intrusion.

Pulling her nightdress over her head, she dressed hastily in the clothes she’d taken off the night before, putting on an extra jumper, and then on top of that her coat. Another handful of gravelly soil came thumping against the glass, and she remembered that Tom had no patience: even when his dinner was almost ready he couldn’t stop himself sometimes from devouring two or three slices of bread, thickly buttered, spoiling his appetite: his wide eyes would be pleading with her apologetically even while his mouth was still full. Quickly Jill made her way downstairs with her shoes in her hand, then went through the kitchen and let herself out by the side door, unlocking it and closing it quietly behind her, slipping into her shoes and making her way round to the front garden. The sky was a vivid blue, so bright it seemed to stand back from the land in amazement; the swollen moon fumed with light above Brodys’ broken old slate roof, which was a sheet of pure silver. She couldn’t see Tom at first, then he reappeared loping round the far side of the house. She supposed he’d been looking for a way in at the back. He was a big man, six foot two or three and fourteen stone, but he walked hunching his shoulders like a teenager, with his hands in his pockets, rolling stiffly from the hips.

— Thank Christ, he said. — I’m fucking freezing, Jill. Let me inside.

The duffel coat had its animal smell, like a wet old dog; it must have rained at some point on his journey. Jill snapped at him in an undertone not to swear, not here — seized in a gust of rage she swung her hand at him, slapping him hard across the face, although the hood’s hairy fabric deflected the worst of her blow. She had never hit him before and he was astonished, though comically obedient, keeping his outrage subdued. Really, he might have bellowed. — What’s that for?

She could tell he was flooded with self-pity.

— I didn’t want you to come here. I didn’t ask you.

All this conversation was carried on in a barking whisper, while Jill took Tom by the arm and steered him away from the house, down the garden path. He said plaintively that he’d come because her mother phoned: he’d thought something must have happened to her, or to one of the kids. — I’ve hitched all the way, it’s taken me all night, there was nothing on the roads, it rained. I had to walk the last few miles, from West Huish. And I got lost, I went the wrong way.

— My mother didn’t phone, she scoffed. — You’ve forgotten, we don’t even have a telephone!

— Well, she did, she spoke to Carol. Who was at Bernie’s, as it happened: I’ll explain later what’s going down with those two, it’s pretty complicated.

Jill thought then that Sophy must have gone through her pockets.

— So that really was Bernie’s number?

— Of course it really was Bernie’s number, he said indignantly. — All the time I was on the road, I was so anxious, worrying about all of you: now when I’ve got here you treat me like a pariah. And I’m hungry, I’ve had nothing to eat since I set out, I’ve got no money.

Knowing he would be hungry, she had brought out a packet of chocolate mini rolls from the kitchen. Struggling with the foil wrapper in the dark, Tom wolfed down the first roll in a couple of mouthfuls, spitting out bits of foil. — Can’t I just come inside? he urged her through chocolate crumbs. — Jilly, we have to talk. This is getting ridiculous. Just because of one stupid mistake.

— Give me a mini roll. I’m hungry too. You woke me out of my sleep.

— I’m not sure if I can spare you one. I’m famished — and these aren’t very filling. But go on then. Look: see how much I love you? What’s mine is yours. Disregard that it was yours in the first place.

Jill ate her roll in smaller, thoughtful bites. — If you want to talk to me, we have to walk. I know somewhere we can go. I’m not letting you inside the house; I don’t want my parents to know you’re here.

He said resignedly that he didn’t mind walking. When they opened the front gate, the lane was so pale in the moonlight, between looming dark walls of hedge, that they felt as if they were stepping down into water. They went on whispering, even when they were surely out of earshot of the house. Tom asked over his second mini roll whether she’d told her parents about you-know-what, about Vanda.

— I haven’t. I’m too ashamed to tell them.

— Ashamed of me?

— Of myself, that I married anyone capable of anything so dismally ordinary as an affair with his secretary.

— She wasn’t my secretary. I don’t have a secretary.

— Someone else’s secretary then. Talk about second-rate.

Tom gave a low, swooping whistle of mock admiration. — Ten days at home and you really are back to being the vicar’s daughter.

She swung round to slap him across the face again and this time he was ready for her, he caught both her wrists easily in his big hands, laughing. — Come on, you have to admit, that did have something of your old man in it. Something of the pulpit.

Jill stopped struggling then and stood very still, with her shoulders slumped inside her thick woollen coat and her head bowed, as if some burden were falling on her out of the dark, some awareness of futility. Tom wasn’t stupid, he didn’t mistake this for submission to him. He put his arm around her carefully and they began to walk again, more slowly. When they were out of the moonlight they had to slow down anyway, because they couldn’t see the road surface. After a while she was leaning into him, letting him take some of her weight, in a way that felt familiar to her and even comforting, though she complained that his coat smelled awful and scratched her face.

— Listen to me, Tom said. — I’m telling you about Paris. A revolution is happening in Paris. The children are tearing down the prison walls. Everything that seemed established and set in stone turns out to be insubstantial as fog.

— Did you write all that in one of your articles?

He said that all the students were asking for was an education — a real one. In the Sorbonne the discussion groups were packed out, day and night. Everyone had their copy of the Little Red Book. Did she know that only eight per cent of the university students in France were working class? The Renault workers came to teach the students about factory work, they told their life stories. It was beautiful. The atmosphere was electric. All the time, everyone was listening to the news on their transistors, even the bourgeois, taking them out in the street so as not to miss anything: not the government channels, but Luxembourg or Europe I. — We had dinner in the quartier the other night, and when we came out there was a wall of flame across the street, we had to tie handkerchiefs across our faces for the tear gas. The police are brutes, they beat up the wounded even when they’re laid out on stretchers, they beat up the doctors. There’s rubbish everywhere, no rubbish collection. And burned-out cars. And you were right about the trees. It’s sad about the trees. But they will plant new trees.