‘I won’t decide until the end of the year,’ said Praxis to Willy, with a fine show of self-determination. ‘Until you have your results. If you do get a first then I’ll stay on and get my own degree.’
‘Can I trust you to be faithful?’
‘Of course,’ said Praxis, believing it to be so.
‘But if I don’t? The examiners are fools. They wouldn’t be examiners if they weren’t.’
‘Then I’ll leave, and get some kind of job; it won’t bring in much because there’s nothing I can do except scrub or cook or baby-mind, I suppose. But it will get the rent paid and if we live frugally we’ll manage. It’ll be such fun. And we’ll be really together.’ She added the last two sentences as conventional afterthoughts, rather than because they sprang naturally together. Living with Willy, supporting Willy through his further degree, could not be anticipated as exactly fun. Companionable, perhaps. Intimate certainly.
‘I suppose we’ll have to leave it like that,’ he conceded. ‘But I’m always much happier if I know exactly what’s going to happen. I hate uncertainty.’
It was a good term. Willy was particularly kind and attentive, as if trying to prove to her that she could not possibly live without him. He allowed her to clean up the flat, and put out the old milk bottles twenty at a time, and even defied the milkman who declined to take them away in case they contaminated his vehicle.
‘It is your statutory duty to remove them,’ said Willy. ‘Why should we be obliged to live with the property of your company against our will?’
‘You’ve lived with them long enough,’ said the milkman. But he took them.
Praxis cleaned the windows and a little sunlight filtered down into the gloom.
‘The trouble with you, Praxis,’ said Willy, ‘is that you’re a born housewife. The taxpayer’s wasting his money on you.’ Praxis feared that it was so. Occasionally, when she forgot, she got a B. Once a B +. Once an A –, but she kept quiet about it.
Easter approached, and six weeks’ vacation.
‘Praxis,’ said Willy, ‘you have a perfectly good house at Brighton.’
‘It’s not perfectly good. It’s horrid. I hate it. The nearer I get to it the lower my spirits sink.’
‘Nevertheless, you can live in it rent free. So can I. We could let this place and accumulate a little money. We’re going to need every penny we can get.’
‘What about rail fares?’ She was struggling against common sense. The victory was his already. He had known it would be.
‘We’ll hitch-hike.’
‘Who’d ever rent this place except you?’
‘You can clean it up a little, if that’s what you want.’
Praxis did so.
Two American exchange students paid thirty-seven shillings and sixpence a week for six weeks, for the privilege of living in the two rooms. Willy and Phillip continued to pay twenty-five shillings a week to the landlord. The transaction had already been arranged and Willy and Praxis had their conversation.
‘You’ll have to clean it up a bit,’ they’d said.
‘The dirt’s its charm,’ Willy had said.
‘Not to us.’
‘Very well,’ Willy had conceded.
‘I’d love to do an exchange to the States,’ said Praxis. ‘Shall I apply?’
‘You wouldn’t get to first base,’ said Willy. ‘They’re not interested in housewives.’ She had rubber gloves on at the time, and was scraping out mouse dirt from under the cooker. She saw his point.
They hitch-hiked down to Holden Road. Willy found a nice pair of high-heeled shoes for Praxis at a church bazaar, for two and six, and she wore them for hitch-hiking, instead of her usual sensible lace-ups. She sat on a rucksack by the side of the road with her legs showing to above the knee. Willy hid behind a tree. When a car stopped he would step out and there they would be, the pair of them, and the car driver left with little option but to take them both.
Praxis felt uneasy about such tactics, but could not quite find the words to express what she felt. Willy’s eyes were bright with pleasure and victory when it worked, and she did not wish to dampen his animation. He showed it seldom enough.
Hilda was home for the holidays, wild-eyed, high-coloured, beautiful and talkative. She was very thin. She put her arms round Willy and kissed him: she took to him at once.
‘What a good rat-catcher he’ll be,’ she said. ‘You’re just like a ferret. I love ferrets. I shall call you manikin, and you shall be our pet.’
Willy kissed her back, not seeming to object to this nonsense. Praxis felt jealous: and dull, plodding and dreary. It seemed to her that, for these particular holidays, Hilda had cast herself as Mary, and Praxis as Martha.
‘Don’t you mind?’ she asked, later, safer, in the damp double bed with its broken springs, beneath the heavy weight of rancid blankets.
‘Mind what?’
‘Hilda being mad?’
But Willy didn’t, it seemed.
‘It’s a different view of reality,’ he said. ‘You must learn not to be frightened by it. Go along with it.’
‘If I go along with it,’ said Praxis, ‘I’ll be like her. You don’t understand.’
He laughed at her. He enjoyed the dirt and decay of the house. ‘Don’t bother,’ he’d say to Praxis as she fought her way into caked corners with scrubbing brush and soapy water. ‘Just don’t bother. The more immune we get to germs the better.’
Hilda took off her clothes one night and danced naked in the garden under the stars. Willy took off his and danced too, prancing about, all white and sinewy, in full view of any passer-by who chose to peer through the broken palings. He beckoned and begged Praxis to join them, but she wouldn’t. She was horrified.
Hilda changed her mind in the middle of a pas de deux about whatever it was she intended, and stomped off to bed, locking the back door against Willy and Praxis so that they had to break in through a skylight window.
Willy wasn’t angry. Willy had looked, Praxis thought, rather regretfully after Hilda.
‘She’s got a lovely body,’ he said. ‘Longer in the waist than you and longer legs. Your face is prettier, mind you. She doesn’t have enough chin. And unpredictability could be difficult to live with.’
Praxis had the same feeling of nightmare as had so often afflicted her in youth. She visited her mother in the new State Institution for the Mentally Afflicted. Lucy sat in a day-room, one of a row of still, staring women sitting in armchairs six inches apart. Most of the other women were over seventy, and there by virtue of physical rather than mental infirmity. The curtains were bright, however, and the good sea-air blew briskly in. The staff smiled. Sister was particularly nice, and did not make Praxis feel, as she felt so easily, that it was all her fault her mother was incarcerated.
‘Praxis!’ cried Lucy, getting to her feet, clutching her daughter’s arm. ‘It’s Praxis. This is my little girl, Praxis,’ she said in pride to the others, but nobody stirred, or answered.
Only Praxis, who cried; whereupon Lucy looked offended, displeased at the sight of the great blubbering lump she had mistaken for a pretty little girl, and withdrew back into inner blankness.
‘She’s getting better,’ said sister. ‘We have so many new drugs. I wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t take her home, one of these days.’
The sense of nightmare deepened. Praxis went to visit Mrs Allbright, and discovered Baby Mary crying in the sandpit at the end of the garden, hungry and dirty, while Mr and Mrs Allbright cooed over their own, new, warm, clean baby inside. They none of them had much to say to each other.
When Praxis went home Willy was playing Strip-Jack Naked with Hilda. Whenever she or he turned up the same card she’d cry ‘rats’ and take off an article of clothing. Her breasts were full against bony ribs, and brown nippled. A dozen birds’ nests hung by string from the clothes dryer on the kitchen ceiling. ‘He’s doing me a world of good,’ she assured Praxis. ‘It’s so wonderful to be able to laugh.’
And indeed, her cheeks were pink and she ate heartily of the sausages and mash Praxis prepared for supper, stark naked she was.
‘Won’t you get cold?’ Praxis murmured, nervously.
‘Oh Pattie,’ groaned Hilda, ‘you are so insensitive. I am an artform, don’t you see?’
It was in the days before girls took their clothes off, easily, or anyone talked about living art-forms. Was she mad, or merely prophetic?
‘Let her be,’ said Willy. ‘Let the poor girl be. It does her no harm. She’ll get better soon, if we just all go along with it.’
‘But shouldn’t she have treatment?’
‘Your mother has treatment,’ observed Willy, ‘and look where she is. So long as things remain undefined, Hilda can yet escape.’ Praxis found his reason reassuring. She absolved him, rightly, of erotic intent towards Hilda. He relieved her of an enormous burden of guilt, anxiety and fear. She felt she loved him. Manikin!
The next day Hilda was sallow, suspicious and more than adequately clothed. She watched Willy with narrow eyes all morning, and took to her room all afternoon.
‘Perhaps we should go back to Reading,’ said Praxis, hopefully.
‘You can’t run away,’ said Willy.
‘I want to run away,’ said Praxis.
‘What about Baby Mary?’ enquired Willy. ‘Supposing your mother does get better? You need to be here, in Brighton.’
‘You have to face your obligations,’ said Willy.
‘A branch of the Institute of Statistical Studies has opened in Brighton,’ said Willy. ‘They’re prepared to take me on.’
‘I’ll give up my further degree for your sake, Praxis,’ said Willy. ‘We can both live at 109 Holden Road. It’s rent-free after all.’
‘You can get a job, Praxis,’ said Willy, ‘look after your mother, keep an eye on Baby Mary, if necessary, and on Hilda, as is certainly necessary.’
‘Praxis,’ said Willy, ‘where will a degree get you? To some kind of secretarial job?’
‘Not necessarily,’ murmured Praxis. ‘I might do better than that. There are openings now for women graduates in the Civil Service and in Marks & Spencer.’
‘For girls with first class degrees,’ said Willy. ‘Look at you!’ She was washing the windows again.
If only, thought Praxis, we had gone to stay with his mother, instead of coming to Brighton.
‘Willy,’ said Praxis, lightly, ‘did you know before we came that they were opening this new branch of the Institute of Statistical Studies down here? Or afterwards?’
‘Afterwards,’ he replied, vigorously. The sharpness of his response surprised her, but she had not the will, not the interest, to ponder the matter further. He was clearly going to win. He had lapped her once, twice, thrice, and she had hardly noticed, though they were both running neck and neck. But he still gave her a sporting chance: manikin, white hairy legs twinkling before her on their way to the winning post.
‘Unless of course,’ Willy remarked, ‘I get a double first, when it would be worth my while staying on at Reading. Then you might as well finish your degree.’
Praxis spent the term organising Willy’s life so as to leave him as much time and energy possible for study. To everyone’s surprise, he got an average second but luckily it would not affect his employment at the Institute. Praxis didn’t do too well in her end of term exams. There had not been much time for revision.
‘You don’t want to study too near an exam,’ Willy had said. ‘It addles the brain.’
‘You girls,’ said her tutor sadly. ‘You will put your personal lives before your academic future.’ He had seen her fall asleep many times in his lectures, and put it down simply to sexual excess. An element of malnutrition, mixed with anxiety, were in fact contributory factors, but he was not to know that. Willy found he studied better when Praxis was sitting quietly in the room, and the hostel meal times had suited neither of them, so she more and more frequently had gone without.
‘So,’ said Willy, when he had recovered from his chagrin at his foolish and ignorant professors, ‘it’s off to Brighton, is it?’
‘Yes,’ said Praxis.
‘It’s been a deliberate campaign,’ said Irma, ‘to get you where he wanted you. You realise that, don’t you?’
Praxis realised nothing of the kind, and was right not to. Self-interest lay so deep, was so firmly rooted in the very sub-soil of Willy’s nature, that his behaviour could hardly be said to be calculating. It was simply what Willy was; he did not need to think: he simply did: and it turned out right for Willy. Praxis was to meet many, many others like him, and to grow more wary.
‘At any rate,’ said Colleen, ‘you won’t go short of sex.’ Irma had broken off with Peter: Peter had broken off with Colleen. ‘He only went with me in the first place,’ wept Colleen, ‘in order to talk about Irma.’
Irma had taken up with Phillip: she could see him as a world famous film producer, and herself as a film star. She slept with him, too: delectable. Phillip ran his tongue round his soft, lovely lips. Praxis could not bear to see it. It was the final straw which broke the back of her resistance to Willy.
She was depressed.
In the hostel the smell of cabbage swirled around the corridors: at Holden Road the smell of dry rot, mingled with soapy water, surged out of rarely opened windows.
Mother, what kind of world did you bring me into? Father, why did you leave me here?
Hilda, have you no idea what it is to be me?
Willy, have mercy!
They moved to Holden Road, and lived openly together, bold as brass.
‘Like mother, like daughter,’ said Judith, cheerfully. She had a job on the buses, as a conductress. The uniform suited her: she seemed vigorous and healthy: her dark moustache was pronounced beneath her peaked cap. The children stayed with neighbours while she worked. Scarlet geraniums tumbled from her window boxes: the house was bright and cheerful. She had a bus-driver boyfriend. ‘But I don’t suppose he’ll walk out on you, like your Dad did on your Mum. He’s on to too good a thing.’
People kept telling her so but Praxis found it hard to believe. Lucy was getting better, but Praxis found that hard to believe too.
‘If you have a suitable home,’ said the sister at Lucy’s State nursing home, startling Praxis, ‘then I see no reason why your mother shouldn’t be with you; the medication must be scrupulously maintained, of course.’
Lucy weighed fourteen stone: little piggy eyes beamed out at the world, placidly enough. Was this getting better?
‘You’re a good girl,’ the sister added, surprisingly enough.
Hilda took a good degree, and went to London to sit her entrance exams for the Administrative Grade of the Civil Service. Part of the examination consisted of a weekend at a country house, where trained assessors could judge personality and manners.
‘So long as she doesn’t take off her clothes, or talk about rats, art or the stars,’ said Willy, ‘she’ll be all right.’
Hilda didn’t and was. She went into the Ministry of Works – an odd thing, people thought, for a woman to choose, but it was the least favourite Ministry and there were vacancies available. She coped easily with the job, lived quietly in a little flat, and contented herself, when under stress, with writing lurid letters to Lucy’s Institution, and to Mrs Allbright, telling on Praxis, and describing Willy’s sexual activities in some lurid and accurate detail. Praxis put from herself any notion that Hilda might have actual personal knowledge of them. Willy never closed doors, let alone locked them: that was all.
‘I threw the letter away,’ said the ward sister, kindly. ‘Has your sister ever received treatment?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t you think she should?’
‘Not really,’ said Praxis, eyeing her moony mother.
‘You probably have a lot to put up with,’ said sister, surprisingly. ‘I really think we should keep her here a little longer.’ Praxis was relieved. But why hadn’t she said that before the end of term?
Mrs Allbright held Hilda’s letters in her hand.
‘Of course I take them with a pinch of salt,’ said Mrs Allbright. ‘Hilda’s so wonderfully imaginative. All the same –’
‘If you are living in sin with a man,’ said Mrs Allbright, ‘I can’t accept you in my house. You understand that? I have to take a moral lead in the community.’
Was Willy a man? Well, of course. It sounded odd to Praxis, all the same, that sharing bed and board with Willy, should be construed as living in sin with a man. He was a manikin, forever twinkling in front of her, white hairy legs vanishing the other side of a winning post. Could this be sin?
‘You could join my Friday nights for bad girls, I daresay,’ said Mrs Allbright. ‘We’ve got a lovely sewing bee going. But I don’t somehow think it would suit you.’ She held her plump young son to her plump young bosom. He smiled and gurgled.
Baby Mary cried and cried in the next room.
‘Shall I pick her up?’ asked Praxis.
‘Crying exercises the lungs,’ said Mrs Allbright. ‘She’s such a difficult, dirty child. The longer I live the more I believe that the sins of one generation are visited upon the next. And now look at you, Pattie! Thrown everything away. It’s very bitter. My husband and I used to pray for you, before we went to bed at night. Please, for our sakes, ask this man to go. I’m sure God will forgive you.’
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ said Praxis.
‘Doing God’s will is always simple,’ said Mrs Allbright, firmly. Mr Allbright no longer sucked her of sweetness, as a bee sucks nectar from the honeysuckle: he respected her too much, alas. She was the mother of his child: his holy Madonna. Only sometimes, at night, in the dark, she would hear him groaning with torment in the other twin bed; and then he would succumb and fall upon her, and there was very little pleasure in it for either of them. She was confused: she caught the infection, or perhaps came to the realisation of sexual guilt. The memory of the early days of their marriage horrified her, as it did him.
Pattie was linked with them, and Baby Mary, too, conceived in sin, born in violence.
Baby Mary lay neglected in her cot: thin and snivelly.
‘I could take her off your hands during the day,’ offered Pattie, cautiously. ‘You must be so busy.’
‘Unless,’ Praxis added, ‘you think I might corrupt her.’
‘She was born in corruption,’ said Mrs Allbright, clearly and unmistakably. Praxis had been joking, but Mrs Allbright was not.
Pattie wheeled Baby Mary home. Baby Mary smiled and laughed, as if recognising her good fortune. Pattie did not take her back to the Allbrights, and the Allbrights did not ask for her. Her birth-certificate, identity card and ration book arrived eventually, by post, without a covering note.
‘I’d like to buy a book on babycare,’ said Praxis tentatively.
‘What for?’ asked Willy. ‘You have your instincts, surely.’
‘They might be wrong.’
‘The point about instincts,’ said Willy, ‘is that they’re never wrong. Wrong simply doesn’t apply. However, if you’re worried I’ll see if I can pick one up somewhere.’
‘I want a new one, Willy. Up-to-date.’
‘What for? Babies have been the same since the beginning of time, surely.’
‘Yes, but –’ Praxis gave up more and more easily. It was Willy’s money, after all. He was earning eleven pounds a week at the Institute, working by day, and in the evenings and at weekends, using their facilities to study for further examinations. Light, heat, and so on, being free.
He posted a time-table on the kitchen wall, and they kept to it, rigorously.
Willy had his breakfast at eight, and left the house for the Institute at eight-thirty. He cycled, and in wet weather wore a rain-cape. The bicycle was Policeman’s Issue, 1928, and massive. She did not know how he managed it, but his calf muscles, as she well knew, were very strong. He returned for dinner at twelve-thirty, went back to the Institute at one-fifteen. At five forty-five he came home, played with Mary and had supper at seven. At eight he would cycle back to the Institute for three hours’ study. By eleven-thirty they were in bed. It was a quiet life but a busy one for Praxis. Willy liked to have his meals set promptly upon the table. Sausages, baked beans, mashed potatoes and oranges remained his staple diet.
‘Couldn’t we try something from a recipe?’ asked Praxis.
‘Why?’ asked Willy. ‘We have a perfectly balanced diet.’ He developed ulcers on his shins, however, and thereafter, on the doctor’s advice, supplemented the diet with kippers.
‘You see!’ he said, triumphantly, to Praxis.
Praxis saw.
They shopped on Saturdays: or rather Willy did. Praxis seldom held actual cash in her hand. The little illicit family, all the same, were well fed, and well clothed, for remarkably little money.
Praxis imagined, rightly, that Willy’s savings would soon be into the thousands. He was keeping them for a rainy day. Praxis might be drenched in cloud bursts, but Willy kept warm and dry, feeling not a spot.
Baby Mary proved with time to have a highly moral nature. She would do nothing, put on a sock or take off a shoe, without first discussing the significance and rightness of the act. Sometimes it would take an hour to dress her. Sometimes Praxis wondered what she had done, and why, but not often.
She felt sure it all couldn’t go on like this. But it did.
There were few visitors. It seemed a house doomed to have few visitors. Elaine came, once, but did not return. She talked about the price and quality of ham, and clearly found the house eccentric and not to her taste and pitied Praxis. Nor was she accustomed to such as Willy, who had grown a beard and wore his shirt unbuttoned to the waist, so that his hairy ribs showed. Elaine, Praxis felt, had never seen an unbuttoned shirt, except possibly on the beach on a hot day, in her life. And who of the inhabitants of Brighton went down to the pebbly beach on a sunny day? That was visitors, who had nothing better to do.
‘At least,’ said Elaine, as she left, ‘you’ve got a man.’ And it seemed to Praxis that whole wide leafy avenue of communication opened up, but she had left it too late. Elaine’s broad energetic back was already disappearing into the mist that blew in from the sea that day.
Praxis comforted herself with the thought that she did not like being pitied by a grocer’s daughter. She wrapped eccentricity around herself like a protective cocoon.
Every time she visited Lucy, Lucy was fatter.
‘It’s the drugs,’ said sister. ‘But it saves locks and bars and keys, and you can see she’s happy, the dear!’
Hilda was having a good time in London. She seemed to be in a good frame of mind: or perhaps no one bothered, any longer, to let Praxis know she was writing letters.
Mary grew talkative and pondered, in infant prattle, about the nature of the universe and the existence of God. She demanded concentrated attention.
‘Oo hear wat I say?’ she would demand, in the manner of a child in a Victorian novelette, if Praxis’ attention wandered.
What have I done with my life, Praxis wondered. It can’t go on like this. Willy thought it could.
‘Nothing happens,’ complained Praxis.
‘Thank God for that,’ said Willy.
‘But are we going to go on like this for ever?’
‘I don’t see why not. You’ve got what you wanted. It’s what you wanted. Have you changed your mind?’
‘No. Perhaps we could go on holiday?’
‘Your life is one long holiday,’ commented Willy, and Praxis had to concede that it was more or less true. Was housework, work? Childcare? No. That was simply what one did, all day.
‘You could always do good works,’ he added, laughing, impaling her up against the old gas cooker. It was no longer greasy, but somewhat corroded, and afterwards she seemed for days to be brushing flakes of rusted metal from her buttocks. Willy, these days, reserved more of his energies for his work, now that he had found a mental discipline which absorbed him, and rather less for sexual activity. She thought she would have been glad, but found she was sorry. She had become all but addicted to their sudden, if temporary, escapes from reality. They broke up the day. He was warmer, too, than he had been. She no longer found his body cold – or had she merely become as used to it as she was to her own? Or worse, had she grown cold herself?
‘Good works?’ she laughed. ‘You don’t understand, Willy, I am the good work.’
He didn’t like her to become too discontented. They started going to the pictures, for the first showing, every Sunday evening. Mary would sit between them. They went in the first six rows, where the cost was ninepence a seat, and the town’s children banged their seats up and down, and you had to crane your neck to see the screen. Praxis rather liked sitting here –watching their great distorted black and white shapes of someone else’s truth – and in later life never quite became accustomed to sitting far back from a wide curved screen. But the pictures had lost their magic by then, in any case.
‘Willy,’ said Praxis, ‘make something happen.’
‘In another couple of years,’ said Willy, ‘Mary will be at school and you could get a job.’
‘What doing?’
‘There must be lots of things.’
‘Being a bus conductor, I suppose, like Judith?’
‘Why not? It’s useful work.’
‘A pity you didn’t stay on and get your degree,’ said Willy to Praxis. ‘You could have got something more interesting, and better paid, like Hilda.’
He had misjudged his investment. Gone for short-term profit rather than long-term gain.
Hilda was earning a thousand pounds a year. It was an unheard of sum for a woman to make. Few at the Ministry cared to stand in her way. She dealt fearlessly and efficiently with problems as they arose, provided they were conveyed to her on paper, and not verbally, when she would tend to dismiss them too quickly as insignificant. She made decisions without anxiety or effort. On the rare occasions she was proved wrong, and her judgment in error, she merely sighed, and shrugged, and accepted blame. Others found her attitude reassuring. As if all one was supposed to do in life was one’s best.
Praxis bit her nails with impatience. Willy disapproved of that.
‘It’s the evenings, Willy,’ she said. ‘If you’d only work at home instead of the Institute!’
‘When I’ve passed my next lot of exams,’ said Willy, ‘I’ll be earning more money.’
‘But you know you won’t spend it.’
‘Why should I spend it when we have everything we want? What else do you want from life, Praxis, apart from what you’ve got?’
What, indeed. A man, a house, a child. It was what most women wanted.
She developed bronchitis. The doctor said the house could do with heating. Willy bought an oil-stove.
‘Willy,’ screamed Praxis, ‘I want some new clothes. I want to go shopping for myself.’
He eyed her, thoughtfully.
‘Perhaps you really want me to marry you,’ said Willy. ‘I will if you like.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Praxis, thus rather hurting and certainly surprising Willy.
‘Don’t you marry him,’ said Judith. ‘All he’s after is a legal right to that great house. It must be worth a fortune.’
Praxis knew that it was not: that 109 Holden Road was a millstone rather than an asset. Willy would spend nothing on repairs: the neighbours complained about the dilapidation and the weeds in the garden: rain leaked through loose tiles into the attic rooms: Hilda never came down to see what was happening. No one, not even Willy, could plot to gain possession of such a property. The look of surprise and horror on Elaine’s face as she had looked round Praxis’ home, remained with Praxis; the mere memory of it had shamed and embarrassed her.
‘If you marry Willy,’ wrote Irma from London, ‘don’t think I’ll come to the wedding because I won’t. He’d water the sherry. You must be mad to even think of it.’ She was officially engaged to Phillip, she wrote. There had been a big party, out of funds provided by her guardian, in South Kensington. Young people in sports cars turned up, and there was a good deal of hooting, calling, slamming of doors and angry neighbours in the night. She had a diamond as big as the Ritz.
‘Don’t marry Willy,’ wrote Colleen from Manchester. ‘It’s a mistake to marry too young, before your character’s settled down. I find mine changes all the time. I used to think I was the athletic type, but my boyfriend Harry, who’s doing abnormal psychology up here, explains it’s just a retreat from sex, and in the meantime I’ve developed the most dreadful leg muscles.’
‘I don’t think I’ll marry you,’ said Praxis.
‘Praxis,’ said Willy, ‘just on practical grounds, I think you ought to marry me.’
‘But what about the cost of the licence?’
‘I am perfectly happy to pay it. I will pay for anything necessary, and gladly. You know that. Don’t try and be unpleasant. It’s just that someday, sometime, Baby Mary’s papers are going to rise to the top of a file somewhere, and if we’re not married, they may say she’s in moral danger and take her away.’
‘I’ll take the risk,’ said Praxis.
Willy waited until Praxis was home from visiting her mother, on Sunday, and they were setting off for the pictures.
‘I begin to think,’ said Willy, ‘that you don’t really want your mother home at all. You know why they don’t let her out? It’s because you’re living with me.’
‘It’s no use, Willy,’ said Praxis, sadly. She could almost feel his body temperature dropping: the flesh stripping away again from his by now quite plump limbs: the anxious, desperate trembling of the muscles return. She thought his mother had a lot to answer for.
But she was sustained by a vision, and there is no one so strong as she who is so sustained. She would not marry Willy for a reason she could hardly communicate to anyone – except, oddly, this time, Hilda might understand. How could she say that the Red Dwarf Betelgeuse had bent down out of the night sky over Brighton beach and told her not to marry Willy. But it had happened.
She had walked out late one night on the pebbly beach. She seldom did so, for gangs of youths now roamed the water’s edge mostly with the intention of fighting each other, but occasionally they were reputed to attack, or rape, or knife some harmless passer-by. Willy said the rumours were exaggerated: people loved to be frightened and feel they could not sleep safe in their beds any more – or at any rate go down to Brighton Beach any more.
Praxis went walking; the night was moonlit and bright; she felt she would at least see danger approaching, if approach it did.
The pebbles gleamed beneath her feet; the sea lapped and glittered: in the distance Brighton Pier flung its dark man-made shape out into deep waters. The arch of the sky was vast and deep. Praxis felt elation rising: and with it the desire to worship, to bow down before the maker, along with the seas, the skies, the valley and the mountains. She felt a sense of destiny, as if someone had turned and touched her on the shoulder.
‘What shall I do?’ she asked the universe.
Betelgeuse replied, leaning down out of the sky, all spears and pale fire.
‘Wait. Be patient. Do nothing. Your time will come.’
She did not doubt but that there was some force guiding the affairs of the universe, working its way peacefully through the chaos of human societies towards an end of its own devising: and that she had some part to play in it, however humble.
I must be mad, she thought, as the star retreated, and the heavens grew less brilliant and more ordinary, and the sea turned back into sea, and the pebbles did not exist to reflect the glory of the Creator, but merely crunched beneath her feet, and made it difficult to walk.
But she knew she wasn’t, and that she wouldn’t marry Willy.
Praxis settled down.
She bought some washed out pre-war woollies for herself, from Mrs Allbright’s summer sale. She gave up looking in a mirror altogether. She cut and stitched her old clothes into passable garments for Mary, who was happy with what she was given. Praxis was becoming quite good at sewing.
She did not read much, although as Willy pointed out the free library was only round the corner, and it was a pity not to make use of it. Words blurred on the page: notions failed to penetrate her mind. She seemed to have thrown away her brain.
Hilda said as much. Hilda eventually came to visit, looking serene and well dressed. She had a little car. There was no talk of rats, art or stars; nor did she take off her clothes. Mary was frightened of Hilda, however, for no apparent reason, and Praxis found herself glad to observe it.
‘She’s a GI child, isn’t she,’ said Hilda.
‘What makes you think that?’ asked Praxis, surprised. Hilda shrugged, and did not pursue it.
In truth, Mary had a serene and hopeful turn of mind, which seemed to belong to another continent; to the future, not the past. She had a long face, a pale skin, thick pale hair, long legs and slightly buck teeth. Praxis liked to think she was very clever. She could read when she was three.
‘So could I,’ said Willy, jealous.
Hilda left.
It can’t go on, thought Praxis. It could. It did. On Sundays she would visit her mother and stare companionably, if wretchedly, into space. At Christmas they would visit Willy’s mother and eat the ritual chicken and Mary would catch cold. Willy passed one set of exams and started on another. His savings were immense. He spent forty-three pounds on new tiles for the roof. He would at least eat fish fingers now, but had gone off sausages, complaining they were mostly bread and bad value. She served them at her peril. Sometimes they would have herrings as a change from kippers. Mary swung on the gate as once had Praxis, and watched the children from the council school, and longed to go. Willy became more sexually experimental. Judith fell off the platform of her bus and broke her ankle: it was badly set and afterwards she limped and lost her job. There was a whispered scandal relating to Mr Allbright: he had exposed himself to a young lady member of the choir, but the case never came to court. Mrs Allbright had twin girls. Sometimes she left them with Praxis to look after. She did not care for them much, Praxis thought. She loved her son. She asked after Mary, but never closely.
Irma married Phillip, who had a job with J. Arthur Rank, King of Starlets. So much for film as a force for social change, said Willy. Willy and Praxis went to the wedding. Irma was dressed in white sharkskin; Praxis actually wore a new dress. Praxis found she loved Phillip as much as ever, but he, of course, was marrying Irma.
Colleen was in London studying archaeology. Her chin was hairy, but her eyes were bright. She had no boyfriend. She played tennis and hockey in the evening: her calves were certainly large and her hands were blistered, but she seemed happy. Praxis refrained from asking her why she didn’t just take a pair of tweezers and pluck out the offending hairs. Some people, she had gathered, waved such hairs as an act of defiance to the expectations of the world.
‘Why do you put up with it?’ asked Colleen.
‘Put up with what?’
‘Willy. Living down there.’
‘Because of Mary. What else can I do? How else can I live?’
Colleen had no reply to that. Who had?
‘There’s only one way to get out of the fix you’re in,’ said Irma. ‘And that’s to sleep your way out of it. Sorry, and all that.’
Betelgeuse glimmered low in the sky as Willy and Praxis went home by coach. To go by coach cost half what it did to go by train. It took twice as long, and was twice as uncomfortable, but Willy could work anywhere, so long as Praxis was beside him. He had his papers on his knee, and could apparently make sense of them, even in the dusk light, and on the jogging vehicle. To Praxis the figures seemed a blur. Perhaps he just stared at them, to save himself the energy of talking? Perhaps he feared his voice would wear out if he used it, as he feared that records would wear out if played too much.
‘It can’t go on,’ said Praxis, aloud. Willy did not hear, or pretended not to hear.
And still it went on.
Praxis wrote to Hilda suggesting that the house could be sold and the proceeds divided between Lucy, Hilda and herself. Hilda wrote back to Willy saying it was out of the question: what was he thinking of? Praxis, fearful, told Willy it was just another of Hilda’s mad letters: Willy seemed to believe the lie. Praxis’ panic, or determination, call it what you will, subsided.
Elaine’s father died. He had a heart attack at the wheel of the delivery van and drove it into a wall. Praxis plucked up her courage, called on Elaine, to extend condolences, and found her behind the counter, slicing ham.
‘No matter where you go,’ said that young woman, pink with distress and determination, ‘or however hard you try, you end up where you began.’
‘It isn’t over yet,’ said Praxis. ‘It’s only just beginning.’ She spoke bravely, but found it hard to believe.
‘I suppose sooner or later I’ll get married and have children and apart from the marriage ceremony, that will be me more over than ever. Come to think of it, we only have until we’re twenty. After that it’s all downhill.’
She had given up her job in the Social Security Office and come home permanently to be near her mother and help run the shop.
Why does it have to be me?’ she complained. ‘Why couldn’t it be my brother who came home?’
‘Because he gets paid twice what you do,’ said Praxis.
‘It’s good of you to talk to me at all,’ said Elaine. ‘My Dad always used to have hysterics about you. First because your mother was in the loony bin and then because you were a scarlet woman. I wonder what he wanted for me? To stand here and slice ham, I suppose. Anyway he’s dead now, and I’m free to do what I like. My Mum’s nearly blind, not to mention stone deaf. I’m sure it’s hereditary.’
She had grown into a sturdy young woman with the same mixture of placidity and vigour which had characterised Judith in the old days: but blessed – or cursed, considering her circumstances – with intelligence.
‘The only way out,’ Irma had said, ‘is to sleep your way out.’
So they did.