He looked at her with reluctance—and with scorn. She knew she shouldn’t have said it. ‘Be serious,’ he said. ‘We can’t afford to have you here. We never could. We’re not—there’s no leeway here. Don’t you understand?’
‘I’m sorry.’
He said, ‘Where will you go?’
‘Here.’ She took out the piece of paper she had been given.
‘Christ,’ he said.
‘He said he’d call them. He said it would be all right.’
Gavin looked away. ‘I suppose it’ll be all right for a while,’ he said. ‘But I’m not going to like thinking of you in there.’
Together they packed Mary a suitcase; there were some clothes of Sharon’s, and some of Mrs Botham’s that were more or less Mary’s by now. Mary would have liked to take along a book or two, but she didn’t want to risk asking. He told her how to get there on the Underground. He gave her four pounds: it was all he could spare. He embraced her quite tightly at the front door but Mary could tell he was already on the other side; she broke away quickly and hurried down the steps.
Mary didn’t want to go underground again.
She walked. The suitcase was light at first but became steadily heavier as the day closed in. She asked other people the way, holding up the small sheet of paper. They read the address and did what they could. Some were no help; some were so bad at talking that they couldn’t have told her anyway; some found the piece of paper distasteful in itself and moved on without answering. She got there in the end. It didn’t take too long.
On the way she had her first memory. It made her stand still and put the case down and lift her hands to her hair. She heard a child shout and turned round shyly; she was in a quiet street, one marked by an air of prettiness and poverty; its small houses were clubbed together with their doors and windows open, and the staggered gardens displayed the family clothes. She was in a quiet street—but then, nowhere was a quiet place for Mary. She wanted to be somewhere the same size as herself and indolently dark, a place where she could shut out the clamorous present. But Mary stood where she was, her hands on her hair, and remembered.
She remembered how as someone young she had wanted to shine a light through other people’s windows, to see into other people’s houses … She was standing on the grey brow of a terraced hill at evening. The spiked gates of the city park have just been shut; the keeper walks back into the distance, glancing sideways and pocketing his keys. The boys have all gone home. They are all safe and having tea in other people’s houses, behind other people’s windows. Turning her head, she could look down the hill and into the square. Here in all their rooms they were shoring up against the darkness. She wanted to see them, to shine a light, to sense the careless ripples of their carpets, the unregarded cracks in their papered walls, the shadows on their stairs. She knew it was impossible—she would never be let inside. She turned and ran wherever she was supposed to go.
Mary dropped her hands to her side. That was all: she could follow herself no further. She looked up. Immediately, the street—the air, the incorrigible present— seemed a little less bright and unanimous to her eyes. She picked up her suitcase and walked on, quicker than before, anxious to find her place. She knew now that she would find it in time.
7
• • •
Don’t Break
The young women at the Church-Army Hostel for Young Women have all taken smashes recently. They have all taken big ones. Some have broken. (Some are not so young, either.) They have all gone out too deep in life.
They have all done too many things too many times with too many men, done it this way, that way, with him, with him. They are all inside here because they have all used everything up on the outside—used up money, friends, chances, all their good luck. They have all taken a smash and turned a corner. Some are trying to turn back. Some have stopped trying. They are fallen women.
Their position is shameful, or could be considered so. But shame is not the word for what they feel. That’s fine by me. But what are they supposed to feel instead? Who did this to them? How would you feel?
… Have you ever taken a smash in your time? What, a big one? Will you get better again? If you see a smash coming, and you can’t keep out of the way, the important thing is—don’t break. Don’t break! … Can you see another smash coming? How big will it be? If you see a smash coming and can’t keep out of the way—don’t break. Because if you do, nothing will ever put you back together again. I’ve taken a big one and I know. Nothing. Ever.
• • •
So now Mary started living by the rules.
She awoke in the basement with her two room-mates at six-thirty sharp, to the sound of a bell. She always woke up in fright, quickly gathering her scattered senses. She got dressed at the same time as Trudy, a shrill-faced, chainsmoking divorcee, and together they joined the queue outside the bathroom while Honey, an apathetic young Swede, was left to linger moaning in bed before rejoining them later for breakfast in the dining-room upstairs, among all the other girls. There they would be stared at with cursory severity by Mrs Pilkington, the Sri Lankan co-superintendent, who ate alone at a table set apart. Her husband, lean Mr Pilkington, the other co-superintendent, would already be thrashing flusteredly through the day’s paperwork in his hot office near the front door. Any trouble and the girls were out. Breakfast cost sixty pence, so Mary just drank her tea.
‘You’ll go blind, you will, girl,’ said Trudy.
‘No blind,’ said Honey, blinking.
‘You will, you know. You can’t leave yourself alone, can you? She can’t. Knowing you, you’ll probably nip down for another one, won’t you, before clear-out. Just a quick one, just in case.’
‘Is good, it says.’
‘What says? All those pussy cookbooks you read?’
‘Is not cookbook. It say is good to touch yourself.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Is good for tension.’
‘What’s so tense about you, brilliant? What have you got tension for. All you do is lie around wanking all day.’
‘I want a job,’ said Mary. ‘How do you get one?’
‘Oh you want a job, do you,’ said Trudy, turning to Mary and nodding slowly. Beneath the table she waggled a crossed leg. 7 see. Well what’s your calling, Madame? What sort of thing have you done before?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ said Mary, who often wondered what sort of things she had done before, before she broke her memory.
‘You people…’ said Trudy. Trudy disliked Mary’s good looks. She did: Mary could tell. She disliked Mary’s looks because they were better than hers. On her bad looks Trudy blamed all her bad luck. Mary used to watch her staring out of the bedroom window, at nothing at all, with her stretched, smarting face. Mary knew what she was thinking. She was thinking: If I could have just traded in some of my good brains for some good looks. Boy, could I have done with some good looks … Mary thought that people were probably quite right to go on complaining in their minds about this sort of thing. But she wasn’t sure. Were things changeable? They had to be. People couldn’t just be wasting their time.
Honey was quite good-looking too, so when she said, ‘I go down now’, and began to move away with her cup and saucer, Trudy called out loudly, ‘Off for another quickie, are you? You’ll get dishmaid’s hand, you will, Honey chile. Dumb split,’ she added to Mary. ‘She’s amazing, that girl. Wanked to a frazzle. I mean, she’s just all wanked out.’
‘I want a job,’ said Mary. ‘I want to make some money.’
‘Hang on, girl,’ said Trudy. She looked at Mary narrowly. ‘Jobs—they take time, you know.’
‘I know they do,’ said Mary.
You had to be out by nine. You couldn’t come back until twelve. Time was slow on the streets when you had no money. Time took for ever. Through diamond-wire Mary watched children playing in the sun. Children gave off noise and motion helplessly all the time. She watched the tublike housewives plod from shop to shop. Housewives accumulated goods grimly until they could hardly walk, martyrs to their carrier-bags. She watched the men idling in loose knots outside the turf accountants’ or on the corners by the closed pubs. Men moved their heads around in the wind and gestured freely, having for the time being nothing that they needed to do. A big dog lay panting in the parched gutter. Ants weaved up from the cracks and over the planes of the uneven pavement. The fat white creatures of the sky loved it on days like this. They were all there. Not one of them had been left behind.