She smiled at Father; intercepting that smile, I felt shut-out, bewildered, childish. My father was sitting in the armchair to the left of the fireplace, smoking his pipe and listening to, of all things, Noel Coward's "The Stately Homes of England." He was as completely relaxed as the grey tomcat asleep by the fire with its head on my feet. That, I might say, was as far as the image extended; there was nothing even remotely feline about my father. He had a face like the statue of some Victorian industrialist, heavy and firm and deeply lined, giving an impression of stern willingness. He was, in fact, a very handsome man; his features were regular, his hair thick and bright, and his teeth - this was rare in Dufton - were white and even. It was an obsolete handsomeness, a Charles Hawtrey, bay-rum, Sweet Adeline kind, solid and male and wholesome. Mother had a thin lively face which only just missed horsiness. She was never still and rarely silent. She had a fresh, rosy complexion and clear blue eyes; at thirty-eight, her hair was already greying but the effect, paradoxically, was to make her look younger, as if she were only pretending to be old.
Father rose. He rose very quickly and smoothly. He was a big man (six feet and over one hundred and ninety pounds) but he hadn't the ponderous clumsiness of most big men. He moved rather as a young bull moves, but without its blind menace.
"Ah'm bahn for a gill, lass," he said. He ruffled my hair as he passed. "Mind what Ah say, Joe. There's some things that can be bought too dear."
Then I remembered the bomb, and the whole scene dissolved. It was as if my mind were in watertight compartments. Behind the doors of this particular compartment, even six years after, were things I couldn't face. It was bad enough when these things happened to strangers; I remembered the WAAF messroom at my first station after a direct hit. I'd stood that better than I'd expected, thinking of it simply as a mess to be cleared up, even after I'd seen that fair-haired girl from Doncaster with both eyes running down her cheeks. But what made me really sick was treading on a piece of flesh which squirmed from under my foot like a mouse. The invasion of the abbatoir, the raw physical horror suddenly becoming undisputed master - I couldn't connect it with Father and Mother, I refused to accept it.
I turned away from the house and walked quickly away. It had been a mistake to go there. The watertight compartments were out of order; images of pain and distress, more memories of things I'd seen during the war and would rather have forgotten, rose to the surface of my mind. As long as I kept on walking they'd remain mixed and chaotic, like imperfectly recollected books and films; once I stopped they'd become unbearably organised; if I walked quickly I could cram my mind with the speed of my own movement, with the grocer's shop and its frosted window and the Christmas tree, with the men's outfitters and the awful American ties, with the Board School and its murderous asphalt playground - and then I stopped trying. It was futile; here on the left stood the huge bulk of Torver's Mills where Father had worked for twenty years; here was the Wellington, his local, and here was the greengrocer's where he bought muscatel raisins for our Sunday walks - wherever I looked there was a memory, an italicising of death.
Why hadn't I noticed it before? Because Warley had shown me a new way of living; for the first time I'd lived in a place without memories. And for the first time lived in a place; in the three months I'd been there I was already more a part of the town, more involved in its life, than ever I had been in my birthplace. And even for three days only, I couldn't endure the chilly bedroom with its hideous wallpaper and view of mill chimneys and middens, the bath with its peeling enamel, the scratchy blankets - my aunt and uncle were unselfish and generous and gentle, they spoke only the language of giving, but no virtue was substitute for the cool smoothness of linen, the glittering cleanliness of a real bathroom, the view of Warley Moor at dawn, and the saunter along St. Clair Road past the expensive houses.
"Dead Dufton," I muttered to myself. "Dirty Dufton, Dreary Dufton, Despicable Dufton - " then stopped. It was too quiet. There were lights in the windows but they seemed as if put there to deceive - follow them and you were over the precipice, crashing into the witch's cave to labour in the mills forever. There were cigarette ends and orange peel and sweet wrappers in the gutter but no one living had smoked those cigarettes or eaten those sweets; the town reminded me of those detective stories in dossier form which used to be sold complete with clues - cigarette ends, poisoned lozenges, hairpins ... I walked over the suspension bridge at the top of the town; the river was running faster than usual, swollen with melted snow and harried by the northeast wind; the bridge was swaying and creaking beneath my feet, and I suddenly was afraid that it might deliberately throw me into the water like a vicious horse; I forced myself to walk slowly, but the sweat was dripping off my brow.
11
Alice took hold of me by my hair. "You've a nice body, do you know that? Hairy but not too hairy. I never could bear animated hearthrugs."
I felt as if I were choking. "God, you're lovely. You - I don't know what to say, you're so beautiful."
"What, an old woman like me?"
"You're not old."
"Oh yes I am, honey. Much older than you."
"I wish you wouldn't talk as if I were a minor," I said with some irritation. "I'm twenty-five and I've had a lot of experience.
"I'm sure you have." Her dark blue eyes were tender and amused. She pulled my head down to her breasts. "There now, my sweet baby, there now. You're very old and very mature and you're going to be a great man."
I could see nothing but her body, breathe nothing but that peppery odour of lavender and the indescribable, infinitely good smell of woman's flesh. I pressed my face tighter; the thin hands on my head tightened convulsively.
"Oh God," she said, "you're so good. You're so good to me. You're so kind. There was never anyone so good to me before. I'm alive now, all of me's alive. I'm feeling things I'd forgotten, the nerve's regenerating. It hurts sometimes ... I don't care." She covered my face with kisses.
The kisses did more to me than the longest kiss on the mouth could have done. They weren't preliminaries; they were complete in themselves. She kissed me as moistly as a little girl; and I was glad of this; I was discovering that I never had really made love to a woman before or truly enjoyed a woman's body. The sort of sex I was used to was sex as it would be if human beings were like screen characters - hygenic, perfumed, with no normal odours or tastes - as if flesh were silk stretched over rubber, as if lips were the only sensitive part, as if the natural secretions were shameful.
Alice was no more greedy of actual sex than the others; but she was shameless in love, with no repugnances, no inhibitions. In her arms I was learning quickly; so that now I actually found myself drinking the moisture from her lips. I didn't want to wash it off, I wanted it to stay, for her to become part of me.
"You beautiful brute," she said, and drew the bedclothes aside. "You beautiful uncomplicated brute."
"No," I said. "As they say in the films, I'm just a crazy mixed-up kid."
She ran her hand delicately over my chest. "You should have been a navvy. I hate to think of you ever wearing clothes."
"Navvies don't go about naked. If anything they wear far more than accountants."
"I wish you were one just the same. I'd let you beat me every Saturday night ... Joe, will you tell me something?"