She felt that those within range ought to tell Alf in no uncertain terms to pack it in; or they might at least give a hint that if he didn’t stop they would hustle him outside to cool off. He knew what he was doing, his taunts deliberately set to bring tears. But others were under the spell of his story, even if only to confirm whether or not they’d heard it before. They too relished the spite that all men use when close to women, and want either to shame them or get them on the floor.
Alf sucked three-quarters of a pint from his jar. ‘Well, there they was, see, a young couple in this room at an hotel. They’d been humping around all night. I don’t suppose anybody got a bit of sleep next door, and that’s a fact. But when the bloke stood at the blind in the morning, ready to let it up, he went up with it, right to the top and round the roller! One minute he was going up and down like a yo-yo, and the next he was spinning round and round like a catherine wheel shouting get me off, get me off, get me off …’
A light of such intensity crossed her eyes at his manic depravity, and the cheering that at last tried decently to drown it, that she would have lost the power of sight for evermore if she hadn’t swung back her arm and let the glass fly at his forehead.
There was no thought of throwing it, yet on doing so she wished she had blinded him, instead of which the lame missile struck his pullover and fell to the floor without breaking. She no longer cared, but the so-called joke perished in mid-spate. His pale features widened and, enraged at how close he had been to an affliction of sundry cuts at the face, shouted: ‘You fucking bitch!’
She stared, at the shock of his voice, wondering why he had bawled such an insult. Resentment and desolation showed in his face when it should have been in hers, for he suffered because they were in a place where he could not hit her as he clearly wanted to for having humiliated him in front of his brothers and friends.
She was seen by his lot as coming from a family that considered itself a bit above theirs, and before the wedding they had made no mistake about letting her know it. Alf had done his best to make her sling something at him (the fact that she had failed to do damage was only through lack of practice) and by succeeding he had not only dragged her to their level, but made an enemy for life.
‘You fucking whore. You pregnant cow,’ he shouted against her face while the others tried to pull him clear. ‘I saw you trying to nobble our Harry in the corridor a few minutes ago.’
Her cool stare prolonged his fury. She had wounded him in the deepest possible way, for the despair in his eyes indicated that it would have been better for his self-esteem if the glass had hit him square in the face and caused blood to flow. He would have had something to talk about, would have been a figure of significance and interest and, most important, would have borne the marks of her surrender to their way of life.
He was insulted to the core, and diminished himself even further by bringing out such ordinary and expected obscenities that they could in no way be considered harmful. She saw from his expression, as he continued ranting, that he had wanted the glass to injure him. All the bad treatment of women, by him and his brothers, was because they sometime hoped to meet one who would pound them into the dust. The revelation came upon her there and then, but she would not begin on such a course, and thought how lucky she was that neither her aim nor her strength had damaged him.
Her father would not let her, and therefore himself, be treated in such a way. He swung his elbow so violently that Alf fell like a stone. The anger in her father’s face was fierce, and none of the brothers dared attack him. Only then did George think it time to take her away.
11
She and George had been as children, half their lives ago. The determination to have nothing to do with his family was strengthened by the difficulty of keeping the last few minutes of the wedding reception clear in her mind. Something had happened. A quarrel had been broiling, the not uncommon ending at such functions. She had been glad to forgive everyone, but only as long as she didn’t have to talk about the fight either with them or George.
Time must pass before she could understand what had taken place. She had been terrified that Alf would begin hitting her while everyone either watched or cheered him on. Only her father would protect her, and he was one among many. She had never felt such danger, and the man who should have been by her side, and whom she had just married, seemed as likely to attack her for throwing the glass as Alf himself.
The mirror was an aid to her reflections. Memories came according to her own nature now that she was in her inviolate room, and a woman of forty could not ask for more than that.
In the middle of the day her recollections were so real that in her anguish she wanted to smash the mirror, then find the nearest telephone box and call George. She needed to talk to him, though would hardly know what to say. Now that they did not live together the scenes from twenty years ago seemed as if they had happened yesterday. Their reappearance, however, only confirmed their final end, though she was frightened that after a stumbling conversation with George a conclusion might be suggested that was worse than whatever memories the mirror compelled her to face. She would drop under a tube train rather than let her body agree to such a backwards walk.
Yet the urge to telephone was as imperative as had been her need to leave him, when any considerations there may have been against the move had suddenly gone without trace. She dreaded the act of dialling the number, and on her walks would never go by a call box no matter what zigzag course she was forced to steer through the streets.
For a while the face that came most often out of the mirror was that of Alf, and she was surprised at feeling no intense dislike. In his drunken need to ‘make her one of them’ he had, it must be said, shown himself more human than the others, who would not have put themselves out to make her anything at all. At the same time she had forgotten as quickly as possible the vileness in Alf’s face, but she had also refused to allow any good that might have been there to influence her opinion for the better. He had been more human because she was able to see in his behaviour a warning that sooner or later George would act towards her in the same way, causing her in that instant to wonder also whether she hadn’t made a mistake in getting married at all.
George blamed himself for what had happened at the wedding, and her refusal to talk about it only prolonged his feelings of guilt. He had hardly been aware of her existence during the party, wanting to enjoy himself with his brothers who now accepted him as their equal because he had, she heard them say, got himself tied up for life in the same way as themselves. After months of waiting, and the tension of the ceremony, George said that he stayed among his brothers so that she could relax with her workmates from the office. It was understandable, but she had wanted him to sit close by so that his brothers as well as the girls from work would see how loving and united they were.
As time went on George considered that there was no need for such useless recrimination, wondering why he should worry about a little harmless fun on his brother’s part anyway. The result of this change in George’s attitude was that she felt guilty at having been the cause of the fight, making her think that if she hadn’t married him or, better still, if she had never been born, he might have led a less troubled life.